I opened my eyes and the world wasn't there
by thesecretsix
Summary: "Life is a game, Yusei, and I'm going to teach you how to win." "But Shikaku-sensei, isn't that what you said about war this morning? And didn't you say 'every conversation is a battle to be won' just yesterday? I think I'm noticing a theme." SI OC
1. Ch 0 - Intro

**Yusei**

I was three years old when I remembered my death.

It's not surprising that it took so long. After all, an infant's brain doesn't understand the concept of object permanence. It takes time for the human mind to develop to the point where it's capable of handling memories from another lifetime.

Unfortunately, my three-year-old mind was not prepared to remember my sickness, decline, and subsequent death. I became a quiet child, hiding from the other children at the orphanage- I wasn't like them, I couldn't pretend to be a child like them, Surely they'd look at me and know I was different. The other children in my age group were stupid, though, and barely noticed my withdrawal. _Real children_ , my traitorous mind supplied, _of course they're not smart enough_.

My now capable mind continued to awaken, and I remembered more of the life that had been taken from me. Broad strokes, at first, but by my fourth birthday I had the complete picture. I had the knowledge and experiences of my forty years- a lifetime as a scientist and a programmer, years of academia, math that never existed in this world (if the technology our little orphanage possessed was any indicator)- plus a little bit… extra. I'd never spoke Japanese, for example, but now I possessed a native fluency. Even with my adult mind, I retained a childlike aptitude for learning. My brain remained in a state of rapid growth: I could learn anything.

I had to get out of this orphanage. I had to see the world. I had to figure out where or when I was, and what I needed to do to win. (I had theories, of course, based on my observations. Some alternate universe where japan survived the apocalypse? Sounded absurd, and I'd definitely have a better idea if I could get to a library… if they had libraries? I couldn't take it for granted that such a thing would exist here.)

Getting out of the orphanage would be a good first step. I was definitely going to go insane if I had to put up with these stupid little children much longer.

But who would take a four year old seriously?

* * *

"Be on your best behavior," the matron tells us, "And don't come out to the common area until I call you. It wouldn't do to upset him now, would it?"

She had to be talking about the man in the green vest. He'd come in about thirty minutes ago, and the older children had started whispering, "This is it! This is our chance!" And a word I hadn't expected to hear at all- "Ninja!"

From what I could see, the man definitely wasn't a black-clad assassin of the night. He was definitely fit, though, with a build I only associated with professional athletes and the posture of a soldier. Maybe these were his street clothes, and he only wore his ninja robes at night?

If he really was a ninja, the matron was right: it wouldn't do to upset him at all.

She continues: "And the academy is a great opportunity for you to make something of yourself. Now then- Aito, Nozomi, Daichi, and Ren- Come along, you're first. The rest of you can stay here."

An academy? My curiosity awoke.

Some children were peeking out the window, checking to see what kind of tests the man is going to administer. I join them, climbing the stacked cots to see a little more clearly.

Pushups, sprints, punches, throwing weapons. Not really my cup of tea. I wanted to get out of the orphanage, yes, but enlisting probably wouldn't be the way to do it. I retreat from the window, and another child quickly fills the resulting gap.

The matron returns and calls a few more names every so often, but I'm no longer interested and tune her out. That is, until I hear my own name.

"Yusei."

Okay. Sure. I'll probably fail this tryout anyways, so it's nothing to stress about. Definitely.

"Yusei," the matron called again, "Follow me, please."

Instead of taking me to the common area, she leads me to the orphanage's administrative office. It's a simple, undecorated room, with a low table taking up most of the space in the center. The green-vested man, presumably a ninja, kneels at one side of the table. As I entered the room, he gestures for me to sit at the other.

Separated by only a few feet, I get my first good look at him. He is young, perhaps in his late teens, with short brown hair and gentle green eyes. He wears a simple black turtleneck under his heavy green vest- some sort of flak jacket, I realize. His olive pants had a few too many bulges to be explained by the (sizable) number of pockets, suggesting more body armor. And on his left bicep, he wears a dull metal plate attached to a blue cloth band. He shifts slightly, and as the plate catches the light, I notice a spiral carved into it.

"Hello, Yusei," he begins, in a kind voice. He's used to working with children. "I'm Kosuke, a teacher at the academy."

I heard the door click shut behind me. Kosuke looks past me and nods to whoever's now there. Craning my neck to see over my shoulder, I see a man dressed much the same as Kosuke, but with a short black ponytail and a goatee. Maybe a little bit older, too.

I hadn't heard his footsteps. That must be a ninja skill.

He nods back to Kosuke, and turns his eyes to me. Embarrassed to have been caught looking, I quickly turn back to the table.

"You're treating me differently," I point out to Kosuke. "You made them do pushups outside. What exactly is this?"

"He is quick," the other man murmurs.

Kosuke smiles. "This is an offer, Yusei. Do you want to be a ninja?"

"No. Why me?"

"Hear us out, okay? You're smart. Anyone who talks to you can tell in an instant. Konohagakure could use you. We can teach you things nobody else will-"

I cut him off. "What can you teach me? How to kill other four year olds in the dark of the night? I think I'll pass. I'm not assassin material."

* * *

 **Shikaku**

"...I'm not assassin material."

I don't know what I expected from this kid, but that was definitely not it.

It's a simple fact that most prodigies are born into ninja clans- the Uchiha and the Hatake, for some famous examples. They grow up around their elite ninja parents, siblings, and cousins, learning the basics of chakra and how to throw a kunai before they can walk. When the time comes, they jump at the chance to participate in the family business.

So it's strange enough to discover a genius in a civilian orphanage, and stranger still to be so openly rejected by him.

And this kid's definitely a genius. I don't even have to administer the usual tests- even Kosuke can see the intelligence in his eyes. But, smart as he is, Yusei doesn't really know much about what a ninja is. Just that he doesn't want to be one.

And Kosuke has no idea how to convince him otherwise.

"Kosuke." My turn.

We switch places. The kid eyes me suspiciously.

"So you're the boss?"

I shrug. "Not really."

"Why do you think you'll change my mind?"

We normally test child prodigies with a standardized gamut of puzzles and strategy games. I put one of these puzzles, a set of interlocking rings that have to be disentangled in a specific way, on the table. Yusei's eyes lock on to it, and I can see his little brain churning for about 3 seconds.

And then he's done. He hasn't touched the toy, but I know he's solved it. I slide it to the side, and put a small red puzzle box in front of him.

It holds his attention for less than a second.

"I could be a carpenter."

It's a non sequitur. "I don't follow."

"Or even a toymaker. I could play these games for a living. Hell, I could even make better puzzles. Then your ninja recruits would never have to be as bored as I am right now."

The kid's kind of an asshole. It'd be hilarious in any other situation, but right now it just feels like I'm losing.

Kosuke's barely holding back his laughter.

"Alright, Yusei. How's this? We'll do one game. If you're still bored, I'll leave you alone and you can… do whatever you kids do for fun around here." He doesn't want to lose, but winning our little match isn't much better for him. I can see him weighing the boredom he thinks the academy will be against the boredom he already knows at this orphanage.

"Have you ever played shogi?" He hasn't, so I'm already explaining the rules to him as I pull out my storage scroll. Yusei nods along as I talk about the placement of the pieces, and I almost miss how his eyes dart to the scroll.

I don't miss his reaction as I pass my finger over the seal, bringing out the board and shogi tiles.

We set up the board and begin to play, but he's clearly focused on the storage seal he's just seen. I can tell it just blew his mind.

I win handily. Because like hell this four year old is going to beat me at a game I've spent twenty years playing. (At least not his first time. Eat your heart out, beginner's luck.)

"How did you do that?" He's not asking about the game.

"Well, you can't write off your pawns as useless. They're an integral part of any winning strategy." The game we're playing isn't confined to a board.

And I just won.


	2. Ch 1 - Academy

**Shikaku**

The bar's crowded, loud, and chaotic, but a jounin doesn't lose his target so easily. I watch the target and his colleagues slide into a booth in the back of the establishment.

Amateurs. Never sit in booths. What if you're attacked? There's only one exit, and most of your party gets trapped between the table, the bench, and the wall. And there's no way for them to see me as I slip past the waitress into the adjacent booth, sitting with my back to them.

Of course, that sort of paranoia is the difference between jounin and career chuunin like them. Also, there's no real reason for them to fear an attack at a ninja bar in the heart of Konoha. I can almost forgive their mistake.

But when you're a jounin, that's the kind of thing you worry about.

I listen to them order drinks, some typical small talk, blah blah blah. Get to the good stuff already.

"Ryu, what's your class like?" asks the one who does most of the talking. Gods bless this gossip. Another voice, presumably Ryu, starts explaining how his class of second year academy students are savage animals. Literally, it turns out: some Inuzuka bit a Hyuuga.

"And you, Kosuke? What are the new first years like?"

I lean in. This is exactly the thing I've put in so much effort (snuck into the academy's admin office, determined when the first paycheck of the semester would be sent out, calculated the odds that the academy teachers would head to each nearby bar to celebrate their earnings, cased the most likely three, and followed the teachers to bar number two) to hear.

"Well, I've got two of the geniuses in my class, both four years old. The Hatake prodigy and-"

"Have you decided what you'll have sir?" chirps a waitress, clearly intent on foiling my plans. I try to find the conversation again in the general hubbub of the bar, but her inquiring stare is putting me off my game. "Sir? A drink?"

And that's when I realize if I answer her, Kosuke will hear my voice and know I've been following him. Fuck.

I could just kill the waitress.

That's a stupid idea. This is a ninja bar in the heart of Konoha, I'd never get away with it. And since I'm sitting in a fucking booth, I'd probably die in some horrendously embarrassing manner.

I answer her question in as few words as possible, to decrease the probability of my voice being recognized.

"Beer," I say, not suspiciously at all.

"Sir, you can't just say 'Beer' and hope I get you something you like. We have dozens of beers here. That only works in books when the author doesn't want to advertise for a brand."

I'm definitely not going to be able to eavesdrop on any of that conversation at this rate.

I snatch the beer menu from the waitress's hand and tap on one. She sighs, and takes the coins I lay out for it. Finally, she leaves and I can turn my attention back on the teachers.

They're talking about something else now- debating some textbook- and it sounds like they've lost one of their number. Another minute of careful listening tells me it's Kosuke who's left.

Dammit, time to make my escape.

In a very casual manner, I make my way to the restrooms at the rear of the building. There's a high window they like to keep open in the men's room that'll let me avoid passing my targets again.

"Nara-san!" Someone says, right in front of me.

How troublesome. What is it this time? I know I paid my bill, so it can't be that.

"Are you okay, Nara-san?"

Oh, it's not at waiter at all. It's much worse.

"Kosuke-san. I didn't expect to see you here at all. You caught me by surprise. How are things?" There's really no option but to commit. I put on a smile and dive right in. "And how's that little genius I helped you with? He must be in your class, no?"

And next time, check if the target's actually left the building and not just taking a piss.

* * *

I wake up the next morning with a splitting headache. It's how this game works, I know.

I get bored, then I get angry. Then I drink.

Usually, I just keep drinking until I fall asleep. Sometimes, Inochi finds me and yells a bit. This time though, I couldn't help but think of the game I only won by accident.

My father was the last person who could force me to play seriously, to really commit to the game. Any game, every game; he was the only person who could seriously match wits with me, or even beat me.

He was a ninja, though. And what ninjas do best is die.

Then I drank.

What happened after that is another story.

But I am a jounin, and one thing that jounin don't do when they drink far too much (and then engage in embarrassing shenanigans) is black out. Meaning, of course, that I remember word-for-word the conversation I'd had with the academy teacher.

He'd mentioned to me that the boy- Yusei- was not at all interested in either the class material or his fellow students. Yusei had shown up on the first day of class with the first-year textbooks memorized, traded for the second, third, and fourth-year books on his second day, and committed them to memory by his third day. Rinse and repeat for two full weeks of school, switching only the books.

Yusei had yet to say a single word to any student in his class, speaking only when the teacher asked him a direct question.

Kosuke begged me: please use your insight, you seem to be the only person who understands him, he's a smart kid, don't let him waste his life. Of course, I muse, Kosuke is entirely wrong about what Yusei's doing. If anything, the academy'll waste the poor kid's time.

In what had felt like my moment of triumph last night, he gave me the address of Yusei's apartment. Looking at the napkin Kosuke had scribbled it on in the light of day, I wonder if this isn't a terrible idea.

What the hell, I resolve, reaching for the painkillers. At least I'm sober this time.

Following the address he gave me, I find myself at a rather plain apartment building close to the administrative district. It's a pleasant enough place and I know other people who've lived in this complex, but it strikes me as an odd place to raise a child. Walking through the hallways, I realize why: the development caters to clanless shinobi looking only for a place to sleep, and contains exclusively studio apartments.

I ponder the situation a few seconds more (surely his minder must live nearby, perhaps they're even responsible for more children too young to look after themselves, maybe the caretaker checks in on them daily, it works out) before dismissing it.

 _106, 108, 110._

I knock on the door. Immediately I hear the pitter-patter of little feet, followed by the light scraping of wood on tile. A little voice calls through the door, "Move to the center, I can't see you," and with a chuckle, I oblige.

"Oh!" exclaims the boy, "Give me a minute." He drags whatever furniture he'd used to see through his peephole back to its original position and scurries around for thirty seconds. Finally, the lock clicks, the deadbolt thunks, and Yusei swings open the door.

"Hello shinobi-san," he chirps with the kind of excitement only a small child can really have, and I give him a lazy 'good morning' nod in return. "Nobody's visited me before so I don't know much about entertaining guests properly and the etiquette books just looked boring and stuffy and formal but I'll read it so I'll do this properly next time and…" The boy continues cheerfully, not realizing my surprise.

There were several unexpected things in what he had just said. First, of course, was that he'd said so much at all. I remember Yusei as a singularly grim child- a characterization well supported by the academy teacher's claims. Of course, my experience with him had been in the orphanage, a morose enough place to begin with, and he'd thought of me as an enemy or an obstacle at the time. It seemed that independence agreed with the boy, and he likely found me more intellectually engaging than the seven-year-olds that made up the bulk of his class.

The second point of interest was that he claimed he hadn't been visited by anyone. The thought had struck me on the way in, but I'd let it get away...was anyone looking in on the boy? I decide to keep an eye and an ear open.

Finally, books. By now, I've made it into the apartment and can see Yusei's living space. It's not furnished, which also takes me by surprise. There's a sleeping roll stacked against the wall, a chair next to the door, and a few plates in his sink, but nothing else to suggest that someone lives here. I'd almost call it spartan, except for one critical detail: the books.

It was no great library yet, but certainly more books than I could imagine one person (let alone one four-year-old) reading in two weeks. Thick books, thin books, history books, science books, books of all sorts were arranged in neat little stacks in the center of the room. It's clear from his statement that these are his primary source of education. Noticing my interest in his reading material, the boy's babbling zeroes in on the subject.

"...and so I got a library card at all three of the public libraries in Konoha, but they're all civilian libraries and none of them told me anything about ninja stuff really so I was wondering if you can answer some questions because all the history books are really obviously incomplete or inexpertly censored and…"

He may have a great vocabulary and a quick mind, but someone's gonna have to teach him about not speaking exclusively in run-on sentences. I cut into his verbal rampage, "Go ahead and ask me your questions, Yusei. I'll answer the best that I can."

"What's the power dynamic between daimyo and a kage because the history books make it sound like the hokage serves the fire lord but the academy texts never mention the daimyo except for in geography but if he wasn't important then why learn where lives and also how come there was no shinobi involvement in the wind-fire-rock wars when the second secret war started halfway through it (and how do you keep a war a secret anyways because surely the civilians notice they're at war) but so-"

"One at a time, kid. I can't answer any of your questions if you keep talking." Interrupting small children makes you feel like a dick.

"-what about the clan wars era because civilian histories act like Konoha's always been here but we've only had three Hokages so that's obviously- oh sorry." Suddenly self-conscious, Yusei cuts himself off.

I begin to answer his questions as I browse the bookstacks. A few tomes stand out. _An Unabridged History of the Land of Fire. A Three Front War: How Did We Win? Culture and Religion in the Five Great Nations._ This stack's all histories, how dull. I move to the next: _Astronomy in the Third Age. A Guide to Celestial Bodies. Agriculture and Technology: A Contemporary Survey._ Seriously, how is he reading these? Has he been reading these? _Fantastic Boats and Where to Find Them._ What a drag. I move more quickly through the other stacks, pausing only when I see _Shogi: From Disaster to Master (Get There Faster), Don't Pawn your Pawns,_ and _General Usage of Generals._

He's smarting at his loss, then. Another win for me, I begin to crow- and then I remember there's no pride in beating a kid who's a fifth of your age. I leave the books alone, since they're making me so childish.

There's a lull in his questioning and I take the opportunity to ask one of my own. "Yusei, it's clear to me that you love learning. Why don't you participate more in class?"

He instantly withdraws. "I don't like it," he says, more like that quiet child I met in the orphanage than the babbling brook from a minute ago. He doesn't volunteer any more information, so I have to coax it out of him.

"What don't you like about it?"

He looks at me like I should already know. I don't, so he matter-of-factly states, "Everything is either too easy or too hard. I'm way ahead on all the book stuff, you know?" He doesn't tell me what he's bad at, but I can take a guess.

"The physical component?" It doesn't matter how clever the boy is, Yusei's still got the musculature of a four-year-old.

"I'm the slowest boy in the class, and they're always going to make me spar with that shitwipe Kakashi since he's also my age." He's really got it out for the Hatake prodigy. "And he's been training from birth to be the perfect clan ninja and I'm just some nameless bastard and he's four inches taller me not including his stupid hair and he's got perfect aim and he can beat up the bigger kids with no problem..." Suddenly, he's a fountain of hatred. And there really is a limit to how much a kid can curse before it stops being adorable and just becomes obnoxious.

Children of his age, in the preoperational stage of cognitive development, tend to be obsessed with the concepts of 'Why' and 'How.' From his endless stream of questions, I can tell that these are driving problems for Yusei as well. The calibre of his questions and the way that he hits the books disguise it well, but Yusei really is in that early stage of intellectual and emotional maturity. While I deal with his intuitive thought substage all day, answering whys and hows, I'm definitely not prepared to deal with the other characteristics of a child in the preoperational stage. Centration- a tendency to focus on only one aspect of a situation at any time, displayed in Yusei's wholehearted pursuit of knowledge to the exclusion of any academic and social life - and egocentrism- the child's inability to understand that the world doesn't revolve around them, sometimes manifested as a complete lack of empathy as seen in Yusei's vitriolic Hatake rant - make Yusei far from the intellectual equal I'd sought in him.

Children really are scary little psychopaths. (Which reminds me, nobody hand him a weapon until he hits an operational stage or something. The last thing Konoha needs is another psychopathic genius with an inferiority complex running around stabbing people.)

But he'll make a terrifyingly brilliant ninja someday, if I have anything to say about it.

I buckle down and prepare to offer some of my best constructive criticism.

* * *

 **Yusei**

Winding down from my anti-Kakashi rant, I feel ashamed at my outburst. I'd hate to alienate the one man who takes me seriously around here.

He surprises me when, instead of leaving, he answers me. "You can fix a lot of that, you know?"

Shinobi-san steps over to the kitchenette area and peers into my fridge. "At your age, diet will have a greater effect on muscle mass than training. Go ahead and double your daily protein intake, and start drinking proper whole milk. You're eating healthily, Yusei, but you've got some growing to catch up on. And it looks like you're basing your diet on civilian books- shinobi bodies are a little different."

I wonder if he can solve any of my other problems? From the academy textbooks, I know the name of the art I want to pursue. _Fuuinjutsu_. But that's really all they say on the subject, besides mentioning that storage seals can be very useful (no shit, of course warping space and time is a handy trick). So I'll need further access to find out anything of use.

He continues, "Perfect aim is really just a matter of practice. You'll learn the technique soon enough, and then you just need to practice it. But you really just need a little patience with these things, and maybe a tad more research."

Unfortunately, I still don't know who my benefactor is, how highly ranked he is, or what he can really do for me. I hate to depend so completely on someone whose name I don't even know, but it seems the alternative is waiting at least four years to graduate.

There's only one way forward, I guess. And he _has_ just given me the perfect opening for this request.

"But Shinobi-san, you know I can't access any books from the shinobi library. I've only got the four academy texts and they don't go into much detail on such matters."

"I'll see what I can do," he says with a lazy smile, "but I can't make any promises."

* * *

The rest of the Saturday passes in relative boredom. I read and take notes, as is typical. I return some of my library books, and pick out some new ones. And at eight in the evening, as I prepare to fall asleep (as any good four year old should), I realize that the thing I really wanted from today was another game of shogi.

I'd never been one for board games, I remember, and I start to wonder what it could mean- but the thought is lost as I drift away for the night.

* * *

The academy is particularly boring this week, I think, as I head home. As usual, Kosuke-sensei tried to get me to pay more attention to his lectures on history and maths. And as usual, I knew the subjects well enough to ace his questions and return to my book without a hiccup. I'd run slowly, but had hope for a significant improvement over a few months. I'd added a glass of milk and a few hard-boiled eggs to my lunches each day.

I am nothing if not patient. If I could wait years to escape that awful orphanage, I can wait a few months to build a little muscle.

'But still', I reflect, unlocking my door, 'it really does suck.'

 _Something's different_.

I get the sense that someone's come here, somebody's done something. The room differs somehow from the room in my memory, from the last time I'd been here.

 _But what?_

Cautiously, I turn on the light and survey my quarters.

I spot it! My beautiful organized stacks of books have been interfered with somehow- the heights are different, at least. As I kneel beside them, I immediately spot the books that don't belong (not because they've been categorized incorrectly, but because they're books I'd never seen before). And hidden behind the taller piles of library books, I discover a small stack, something altogether new.

It's five hardbound books, arranged only by size. The largest of these, at the bottom, is an impressively thick, red textbook proudly titled _Anatomy of the Ninja._ Only slightly thinner is a blue tome with an embossed title: _Chakra Dynamics I._ The two books above that are leather bound journals with their titles painstakingly inked by hand: Volumes I and II of _Three Generals and a Bishop: An Analysis of the Second Secret War._ But the most exciting thing here sits on top of the pile, a plain orange spiral-bound notebook.

It's cover offers no answers, so I gently open it. There is a title page, but my eye is caught instead by a simple white card that's been placed inside.

It reads, "I can't make any promises." I flip it over, and there's a signature. Finally, I know my benefactor's name.

Not that it's any use to me, though. I turn my attention back to the title of the notebook. It's a simple title that doesn't give away too much about the content matter, but I'm no idiot. Shikaku knows what I'm here for, after his little fishing expeditions. And he's offered just enough bait that I'll keep biting, no matter how frustrated I am with the academy.

 _Theory I._

* * *

 **AN** : FAQ

Dear thesecretsix, why are your unreliable narrators so unreliable? Because they're either drunk or they're small children.

Dear thesecretsix, why did you write so much more Shikaku than Yusei perspective? Because it's hard to get in the mind of a pseudo-four-year-old.

Dear thesecretsix, did you make up all that child pyschology stuff? No. I'm not an expert, but I read a book.

Dear thesecretsix, why are you such a nerd? I do what I want.

Dear thesecretsix, how often will you update? I've written a lot of this story in rough, but most of what I've actually written is Yusei age 9-15. I've got detailed plans for the stuff between now and that segment, but as I mentioned earlier, it's hard to get into the mind of a four-year-old. I've really been hoist with my own petard here, but this first-person perspective-shifting multiple-unreliable-narrators thing is the device I want to use for this story and that's not changing.


	3. Interlude 1 - Kakashi

**Interlude 1 -** _ **Kakashi**_

 **Yusei**

One of the advantages to living in a shinobi apartment complex is the proximity to the nearest general-purpose training field. On evenings like this, it almost makes up for the odd hours my neighbors keep, all the shouting in general, and the weekly fire alarms (which is only to be expected from the ninja of the land of fire, I suppose).

I spend a lot of my evenings out in the training field, usually working on my accuracy and precision with ranged weaponry. Nara-san was right, it really is just a matter of practice to have perfect aim. Kosuke-sensei showed the class the methods for throwing shuriken and kunai, and it only took me a month of consistent effort to master those projectiles. Since I was doing so much better with thrown weapons than with ninjutsu or taijutsu, I'd decided to keep playing to my strengths.

So here I am, out by myself on a gloomy and overcast evening, trying to figure out senbon. I've been making a lot of progress, and I figure a few more hours of work might really pay off.

Or at least, that was the plan. Until the biggest (smallest) killjoy in the village shows up to rain on my parade.

He's been hiding in the tree behind me for a good five minutes or so now, but I can instantly identify him from the sound of his breathing (there's nobody else that wears a stupid little mask like that on a humid summer day). And it's just pissing me off to the point that I can't focus on my senbon anymore.

Finally, I decide to call him out.

"Hatake," I address the tree, "what the hell do you want?"

"You're so slow, Yusei. I've been here-"

"Five minutes, I know." I'm not in the mood to hear an enumerated list of my failures. "I was trying to ignore you."

Reading his expressions is always a challenge with the ever-present mask concealing sixty percent of his face, but there's a hint of confusion (almost hurt?) in his eyes. I begin to feel a little embarrassed for having been so rude.

"I had really high hopes for you, Yusei. I want you to know that. You came into the academy at the same early age as me, also lauded as a genius. I'd hoped we could have been comrades. Friends, even."

His words reach me, and I wonder if perhaps I've been unfair to him. It's not Kakashi's fault that he's been trained from birth to be the perfect ninja, and I've treated him poorly because of my petty hey, we've still got three years left in the academy, and I'd rather not go through it friendless and alone.

I hardly think this is a bridge I've burned completely. While I've badmouthed him behind his back, the worst I've actually done to Kakashi is ignore him. And occasionally curse at him, I guess.

 _This is salvageable. I can apologize and then he'll apologize and that can be the start of a friendship. That's how all the strongest friendships are born in novels and manga. We'll end up on a team together and be friendly rivals, spurring each other on to greatness._

"Hatake-san…" I begin, but he plows over my nascent apologies like a little steamroller of hatred.

"It's a shame you were such a disappointment. I thought you had potential, but you quickly revealed yourself as an inept hack. You have no talent as a shinobi, and you should give up, go become a banker or something, before you hurt yourself."

Any guilt I felt is gone completely.

He continues, "Since this is the last time we see each other, I just wanted you to know that."

"I won't quit on your say so, you bastard!" I keep a tight lid on my emotions, the hurt and the anger, my visceral response to his words. My face won't betray the pain I feel. Breaking shinobi rule #02- A shinobi must never show any weakness- would only give Kakashi more ammunition.

"You really should," he replies smugly. "You'll spend the next three years getting beaten by the older children, now that I'm not in your class. Oh, did I forget to mention that? I applied to graduate last week. I passed the exam an hour ago. You're talking to an official genin of the leaf."

He keeps gloating, "As of now, I hold the record for the fastest graduation from the academy."

I don't need to see past his mask to recognize the smirk on his stupid face.

"Goodbye, Yusei. Try not to die too soon." He turns to leave. "Oh, and you're throwing those senbon incorrectly. Not that I'd expect better of you."

I try to resume my target practice once he's gone, but I'm just too angry to concentrate.


	4. Ch 2 - Educational Games

**Yusei**

It's Thursday afternoon, so I wait for the knock on my door that heralds a break from the tedium of academy life. After his initial visit a year ago, Shikaku and I settled into a routine in which he drops by once a week, barring missions. Generally, he answers my questions about the shinobi world- the stuff the books he lends me don't cover- as he schools me at shogi.

Rarely, I scrape a win. (The current score stands at three wins and fifty-one losses for me, with one draw.)

Our arrangement seems to benefit me disproportionately, with all that I get out of it. Without Shikaku's recognition, I'd still be wasting away in the orphanage, pretending to be a normal five-year-old. I certainly wouldn't be able to afford the academy's tuition. Nor would I have access to the books he lends me, things from the shinobi library, the Nara clan library, and even the notes of some student of fuuinjutsu. I wonder, sometimes, what exactly he gets from this.

There has to be a return on any investment.

My theory is that he's been instructed to train me, just as he was ordered to recruit me back at the orphanage. I know that Shikaku works for the tactical division- an office that analyzes the information brought in by the intelligence division and advises the village's top brass- and I suppose I wouldn't mind being recruited for that. It'd be something of a cushy desk job, meaning I'd never have to be a combatant in the field, killing, being killed.

Come to think of it, I should probably try harder to get recruited for this right out of school.

There are other jobs I could be satisfied with...maybe a hospital job, or perhaps the infamous Orochimaru's scientific division (known for it's lack of ethics and morality, even by shinobi standards) would be tolerable positions that would let me study the things I want to study.

My musics are interrupted by the arrival of my mentor, almost an hour later than usual.

I let him in, then hustle to my kitchenette to make a new pot of tea. (I drank the first pot before it got too cold.)

"Hey, slow down Yusei," he says, "I've got an answer to your last question. Don't let me forget to give it to you."

That gets my attention. "The translation matrix question?" The last of the orange-covered fuuinjutsu notebooks had introduced a rather strange notion: seals could interact directly with the human will. Until this, I'd found fuuinjutsu theory to be little more than the math-based logic (hints of linear algebra, but they weren't quite there with the math yet) that I'd mastered in a previous life. Basic storage and summoning seals (the bread and butter of my mystery notetaker) tended to take in a physical input- typically chakra- and based on the amount of chakra produce a specific result, storing or releasing an object, or summoning a specific creature. The translation matrix turned all of that on its head, somehow providing a framework for the seal to interface with the mind of the user, allowing for more dynamic seals.

"Yup." Shikaku lays a few sheets down on my newly purchased table as he kneels beside it. "Minato-senpai was adamant that you destroy this when you're done with it."

Destroy it? Then it's not really a common-knowledge bit of theory. Once again, I feel impressed and grateful to the mysterious genius providing my fuuinjutsu correspondence course.

Also, 'Minato.' I know that name, but why. The knowledge flits about at the edges of my mind.

"Um...Minato?" I question. What I mean is something along the lines of 'who is Minato and why do I dislike him already?' but the words don't come out because it's just on the tip of my tongue and I know that this is a thing that I know and I just hate it when I forget something because I just don't forget anything and…

And I've spaced out. I tune in to Shikaku, who's telling me about his buddy the ace jounin Namikaze Minato. "Surely you didn't think _I_ was researching and answering your fuuinjutsu questions," he chuckles, "Minato-senpai's a whiz at that stuff, so I just ask him. There's an old Nara clan saying, 'Never do a job someone else can do,' you know?"

 _Namikaze Minato. Oh._

Kakashi's new sensei. The jackass that went and made the bastard even more intolerable by taking him as an apprentice, increasing the gloating I had to endure by sixty percent. (While I encountered Kakashi less frequently now that he'd left the academy, his ego swole well past bursting point and now overflows freely, causing flash floods of narcissism in the boy's immediate vicinity)

My first instinct is to ball up the paper and burn it right away, but such childish behavior should be beneath me and my pragmatism wins out. Even as I stammer out my thanks, my eyes pour over the page, commiting the equations and sealing diagrams to memory _. Tell me your secrets._

More linear algebra than I thought this world had developed, but I guess that might have been implied by the word 'matrix' concept's name.

* * *

 **Shikaku**

It's always fun to watch the gears turn behind the kid's eyes. He's a very visual thinker; as his eyes tick back and forth across the page, Yusei's brow creases and relaxes. He jots notes in the margins of the page, weird little symbols that aren't part of any math or fuuinjutsu I've seen. Finally, he looks up, folding and pocketing the papers.

"Thank you, Nara-san. This really helped. Please convey my gratitude to Namikaze-san as well."

One thing he definitely learned during his first year at the academy is manners.

That reminds me, "You've started second year with a new sensei, right? How's that?"

"Awful," Yusei grumbles, "Now that Hatake is gone, I have to spar with eight-year-olds, who are a lot more physically developed than me. I've been on the high protein diet all year, and I'm at peak musculature for my size. It's just that I'm three years younger, and then I've just naturally got a small frame. Damned genetics. It's not even just my age, you know? I ran into Hatake at the training fields the other day, and even he's half a foot taller than me these days."

"But the rest of it?" I ask. "There's more to being a shinobi than taijutsu. Hell, I haven't punched someone for a couple years."

The last year's taught him some maturity as well, with the way he didn't devolve into profanity at the mention of his little rival's name.

"Well, they haven't really taught me anything that wasn't in the book, which I read in the first week. And I'm getting pretty good at projectiles now that I've finally got the movement for senbon down."

They don't teach senbon in the academy, if I recall correctly, which means he's doing that on his own too. I've always suspected the academy is a waste of time, even when I was a student there; the sharper kids pick up pretty much everything they need to know on their own anyways, and the dullards eventually fail out. They won't even touch ninjutsu until the final year (after they've weeded out most of the failures), but there's no point in wasting three more years waiting for that.

I need a way to get Yusei out of the academy. This isn't a new line of thought for me, but unfortunately, I'm not an elite jounin like Minato-senpai. I simply don't have the clout to march into the Hokage's office and tell him that I'm taking an apprentice. And sharp as he is, Yusei's not well rounded enough to graduate properly yet.

In the attached kitchenette, the kettle whistles.

"I'll fetch the tea, get the board?"

"Sure, sure." With a practiced hand, I unseal my board and line up the shogi pieces. Yusei brings the tea, in same two chipped white cups as always. The stipend accompanying his scholarship is just small enough that his priorities peek through. He skimps on his furnishings for additional book money, so even his crockery (sparse as it is) comes well used. On the other hand, he has proper bookshelves now, and a fairly nice encyclopedia set.

We start the game, and from his first moves I know this is my game. Yusei's playing particularly sloppily today, abandoning his pawns to set up a Mino castle. It's a strategy he favors, and I've been trying to break him of the habit. He'll shore up against an early attack, but if I build my modified Yagura castle instead, he'll be left with a weak defense and a crippled offense that won't break my base.

It proceeds as I expect, and I break his line with ease. He responds with a few good drops, but my defences make short work of them. I'm prioritizing positioning over captures now, so he rarely has the opportunity to make a drop at all.

"So," he begins, "You were late today. What happened there? Typically you're pretty nine-to-five."

I wonder how much to tell him. Tactical's not the most glamorous job, but today was one of the more exciting days. Besides, he's hardly got the security clearance. But… if I want to recruit him into the division, I should start building the case for tactical now.

I take another pawn, followed in short order by a bishop. With my pieces coming around the left flank, I'm already looking for an endgame. Yusei's not reacting appropriately to this- he's failing to cover a lot of appetizing targets- but my strategy shouldn't come as a surprise. As he flails about incoherently, I take his queen.

 _This is it._

But suddenly, he closes ranks and pivots. With half my forces trapped behind his lines, I'm left raw as his generals and rooks come in on my right, backing them with a clever drop of his freshly captured queen.

"Count it." He says triumphantly. The whole thing was a trick. Yusei knew I wouldn't be able to resist punishing his sloppiness, so he baited me.

"Seven to mate." I concede.

This sort of sneaky, underhanded tactic...He's ready to be a ninja. And I may have just found the chance I'd been looking for.

I've made my decision.

"We misplaced an army," I tell him. I'm formulating my own final exam for Yusei, one that'll assure me that he's truly ready for the kind of work I'm imagining for him. And there's no better test than the real thing.

His eyebrows go up. "What? Misplaced? You lost your own army?"

"Hehe, no. We've been tracking the Earth daimyo's troop movements for a few weeks. He's been moving very quietly, calling on his nobles for soldiers. We suspected he'd start moving around now, but the army isn't where intelligence said it ought to be.

"We have a few prospective paths for the army to take, based on our assessment of the strategic targets we suspect Earth knows about. Unfortunately, it's too costly and risky to send shinobi to surveil all of these locations. We're seeing four likely targets, but we can really only reinforce one position.

"It's particularly troublesome; we're totally stumped." Here's where the fib starts: while this was one of the most exciting problems tactical had been faced with recently, it's right up our alley. Konoha would hardly be standing if her tactical and intelligence divisions couldn't keep track of marauding armies.

A small crease forms on Yusei's forehead, and I wonder if perhaps it really is too early for this after all. "Is this a ninja army?" he asks, "Because I can't imagine hiding the movements of any significant group of regular soldiers."

I shake my head, "Iwa's adopted a wait-and-see approach. It doesn't look like they plan to support their daimyo in this."

"Oh. I can't see why you're having any trouble with this, then. It's straightforward enough." Turns out he's only confused about how stupid we must be, and not the problem itself. Smug little bastard. He and his hated rival really are peas in a pod- the freaky genius children that they are.

He hops up to retrieve a thin red paperback from one of his numerous bookshelves. _A farmers almanac_ , I realize, _what does he have that for_?

"We'll just follow the money."

* * *

AN: FAQ

Dear thesecretsix, why the long wait? I moved. It took a while.

Dear thesecretsix, math? I try to make this not read like a math paper. A lot of my other writing is supposed to look like a math paper, so I sometimes struggle including only a fun amount of math jargon.

Dear thesecretsix, that's not how shogi works? Yeah, I dunno. I've only tried to play it once and I wasn't very good. I'm also shit at chess. We've already established in ch 1 that I'm not into board games- but Yusei is. Hopefully the story I'm trying to tell is enough to overcome the shock of lackluster shogi research.


	5. Ch 3 - The Apprentice

**Hiruzen**

"I knew you wouldn't understand," Nara Shikaku tells me, "with all due respect, Hokage-sama, that's _exactly_ why I didn't ask your permission."

It's a strange day when one of my most calm, rational, and level headed jounin can say those words to me with a straight face. I could imagine that sentence from Jiraiya, perhaps. He was always fiercely independent, and he'd never really grasped that whole 'obeying superiors' concept. But Jiraiya had never been all that clever, so it was almost expected. Shikaku, on the other hand...certainly had no such excuse.

"I think you'll find that you don't have the luxury of making that decision for yourself, Shikaku. Nor can you excuse yourself from explaining your actions by telling me I wouldn't understand. In fact, there are a great number of things you've done here that, if you look through your shinobi handbook, are all things you're definitely not allowed to do. Taking an apprentice. Enlisting a new ninja. Withdrawing a child from the academy. Sharing classified military intelligence. Not telling me about any of it. Some might even call that treason."

"I do humbly beg your forgiveness, Hokage-sama." Shikaku looks embarrassed, but thoroughly unrepentant. He's the prince of tactical, strategy's up and coming star, and thinks I can't punish him too harshly lest I cripple my military might. I may have to teach him that nobody's irreplaceable.

Still, he's usually so reasonable. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. But I can slap his wrist hard enough that he doesn't act out again.

"If you wanted to teach so badly, there are official channels. Actually, I can recall you being tapped as a jounin-sensei just last year. But you failed the team, which if I remember correctly included the top two ranking students of the class, calling them...what was it again?" I make a show of finding the notes in Shikaku's file. "Ah, here it is! Complete and utter dunderheads who shouldn't be allowed to speak in public."

He looks like he wants to speak up, but he holds his tongue, thankfully remembering the common sense of not interrupting a dressing down from the leader of his village. That's another check in the 'smart enough not to have illegally pulled a five year old from the academy to be his apprentice' box.

My erstwhile student Orochimaru, loitering about in my office because he's jealous (just yesterday I told him he'd have to wait until his prospective apprentice graduated from the academy, and he pulled out his "but you let Shikaku do it and surely you like me more, sensei" card, alerting me to this whole mess) and wants to see Shikaku taken down a few pegs out of petty revenge, fails to holds back a snort of laughter. He's always been intolerant of stupidity.

"And okay, let's say the child really is clever enough for you. There are still proper channels and procedures you have to go through to take on an apprentice. Assessments that have to be taken, showing that it's in the village's interests to devote a jounin full time to the growth of a single shinobi. I make the final decision. You've ignored all of that, going over my head- saying you know better, that I wouldn't understand- to enlist a toddler in _my army_.

"Don't insult my intelligence, Shikaku. Make me understand."

"Yusei revolutionized the field of military intelligence," he begins, "He offhandedly created a new method of covariate analysis- with full statistical rigor- through which troop movements can be predicted by fluctuations in the time-evolution of staple grains pricing in fourteen critical markets, as a response to-"

I cut him off, because that line of explanation was going nowhere. At least for me, I amend, noticing Orochimaru's look of blossoming interest. Suddenly he's interested in the child as more than just leverage. I briefly entertain the thought of Shikaku and Orochimaru playing tug-of-war over some hapless child: I'm tempted to let them. "From the beginning, please, and do use less jargon."

He's exasperated, but so am I; I'm also the Hokage, so my irritation wins out. My shinobi does as he's told.

"Alright," he sighs, "Roughly thirteen months ago, I was approached to help evaluate and recruit children at various orphanages." Shikaku pushes past whatever he thinks he has to prove, whatever banner of independence he thinks he's waving (whatever midlife crisis he might be having), and delivers his story like a professional- the facts, with just enough detail to flesh them out. He describes the mentor-mentee relationship he formed with Yusei, how the boy absorbed everything he was exposed to, from Jiraiya's notes to the farmer's almanac. Finally, he presents his so-called final exam and the rationale behind it.

"The boy has a tendency treat known tests in a certain manner. He'll shut down and tell you only the answer he thinks you're expecting, I've noticed, like he's trying to get the best grade in class. Or he just recites the answer out of a textbook. The only way to get him to really engage is to make sure he can't tell you're testing him, so what I did was tell him that finding the Earth daimyo's army was such a troublesome problem that I honestly couldn't solve it. That's how you get him, you know? I expected Yusei to pull out the same tactical analysis we did, evaluating the list of prospective targets, figuring out the pros and cons of each one, looking at records of past battles to get a feel for Earth's generals- that was my criteria for a pass. But he comes up with something totally different.

"So he tells me it costs money to feed an army, and pulls out a farmers almanac. And he tells me some stuff about how grain is sold and shipped around the countries, little economic facts that people kind of know but don't really think about. I mean, the farmers and the merchants probably do but why should shinobi?

"Basically, the Land of Fire just produces this huge excess of all its staple crops, because we've got the best climate and the state pays out subsidies to farmers on grains, and we export them to most of the major countries. And we just have the data on all these transactions, because merchants keep detailed records, so they can claim their government subsidies . A couple big merchant groups keep offices in Konoha, so we pull their files and fit their data together.

"Then Yusei does some calculations, some stuff I hadn't seen before but he told me they're in some book he has on statistical analysis. He compares regional prices and sales over the last ten years- from the almanac- against the general sales numbers from the last few months, and identifies fourteen districts in which current spending is atypical. So then he breaks those down to a more detailed level, looking at the change in prices day-by-day, kilometer-by-kilometer in those markets.

"With that, he sits down with the map, and plots out the gradient of that time evolution. He does the same thing for each of the staple grains, wheat, barley, rice, and so on. And just like that, he draws out where the army must have camped each night, and shows that they're looking to cross the border in Grass Country to hit one of Fire's major supply depots, just like Tactical Division predicted. But what's even better is that this method detected a second body of equal size to the original army we'd been surveilling, on route to join the first force just east of the Grass border. Based on this data, Tactical was able to revise our recommendation; we chose a battlefield to the southwest and General Kuroda was able to repel the secondary force before they joined the main body.

"There was only one logical response to Yusei's runaway success: I withdrew him from the academy and hired him at tactical immediately."

"Well," I start, and then I stop. I want to tell Shikaku that it doesn't matter how brilliant the boy is, he's entitled to a normal childhood (or whatever veneer of normalcy one lives with, entering the academy at four). It's bad enough that the Hatake boy successfully graduated so quickly, but at least he has Minato-kun for support. Shikaku, who treats the world as a game he needs to win, can't offer a child that kind of guidance. Shikaku, crippled by his vices, should not be allowed to take any student until he cleans up his life. I could give him time to sober up, let little Yusei graduate from the academy properly, and and in four or five years they'd take the world by storm.

And yet, with war breaking out between the nations, can I really turn my nose up at such a resource? Do I have four or five years to let this brew? We need these new techniques, we need every edge we can get to make it out of the hell that's to come.

I take a minute to pack my pipe, letting the routine relax me. A subtle fire jutsu lights it, and I take a deep drag as I examine my conundrum.

If I let Shikaku take an apprentice, I'll have to deal with Orochimaru's whinging. If I let Shikaku take an apprentice, he'll probably get the kid killed within a year or two. If I send Yusei back to the academy, every death his skill might have prevented will weigh on my shoulders.

Winning the war that's coming will save enough lives to make up for one innocent sacrifi- no, I can't think like that. It's not fair to anyone if that's how I make decisions.

Here's the best I can do.

"Well," I say, "I'll allow it." I ignore Orochimaru's hiss of petty anger, just as I pretend not to catch the victorious twinkle in Shikaku's eyes. "But Yusei isn't your apprentice, he's an employee of tactical. He's not allowed to take missions without my explicit approval. And file the damned paperwork, Shikaku."

* * *

 **Yusei**

Shikaku comes into the office just after lunch. He's more cheerful than I've ever seen him, walking with an uncharacteristic spring to his step. He whistles as he walks through the bullpen- the arrangement of desks belonging to junior members of the division like myself- stopping at my new desk, just outside his office.

"Good news," he says enthusiastically. _The world must be ending,_ I theorize, craning my neck to perhaps catch a glimpse of any imminent meteors or locust swarms through the high windows. I ignore him rummaging through his numerous pockets, muttering "where did I put it again," in favor of the clear skies. _Maybe a plague_. _It must have killed off everyone outside this building except the breweries and distilleries._

I've already resigned myself to a lifetime of slacking off, playing shogi, and getting drunk (as apocalypses go, it's a good one) when Shikaku finally finds what he's been looking for.

"Ha! Your very own forehead protector." Shit. I'd been very happy with myself for the last week. I'd gotten myself removed from the awful academy and procured a job solving puzzles for a living, avoiding a short and bloody life as a ninja. The shiny new forehead protector being held out to me suggested that I'd not been as successful as I'd hoped.

I put on a smile and deal with it. This is far from the worst case scenario (as long as I'm not running through the woods stabbing and being stabbed, I'm doing alright).

"Thank you, Nara-san." I'm supposed to be happy to officially be a ninja, so I push my conflicted feelings to the back of my mind. "Is there a proper way to wear it?"

"Just make sure the emblem's visible." He demonstrates, showing his own forehead protector tied to his left bicep.

For lack of a better idea, I tie mine the same way. Shikaku's ecstatic. As he heads into his own office, he calls over his shoulder, "Oh, and call me Shikaku-sensei now!"

God, I really hope this mood doesn't last.

* * *

I'd anticipated having trouble fitting in at the office due to my age- just as I'd struggled at the academy. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself accepted by most, if not all, of my coworkers.

"Tactical pretty much runs on merit," my desk-neighbor Ito Makoto tells me, "Everyone here just wants to know how clever you are, and not much else matters. Normally, people might be suspicious of a young newcomer like yourself. You've already got a major victory under your belt, though, so you don't have much to prove. If you have a lot of good ideas, and communicate them well in meetings, you'll be advancing in rank in no time."

So it's just like academia; I'm basically a grad student right now. Ito-san, with his salt-and-pepper beard and his desk in the bullpen, is analogous to that easygoing senior student who puts off his thesis _another_ year. I know this world.

He goes on, "Actually, we're all clamoring to learn that new methodology you created. Has the boss made you write it up yet?"

"I haven't really spoken to anyone here other than Shikaku-sensei, to be honest," I respond, "but he's not _the boss_ , is he?"

"Nah," says Ito, "but don't worry. The boss is a bit intimidating, but she's great."

* * *

The best thing about working at Tactical, I find out, is that it's a division of Anbu. While I'm technically only a Genin, I'm drawing a pretty decent salary- far above the stipend I'd been living off the past year. There's another amazing perk, though. All the classified material that comes through our office means that I've got an A-rank security clearance. Which translates to pretty much unlimited access in the Konoha Shinobi Library.

A few days after sensei gives me my forehead protector, I stroll confidently through the doors into the great library. It's a massive building, at least compared to the other structures around here. The Shodaime Hokage created the main building with his Mokuton, they say, raising it fully formed from the ground. Of course, there were no books in it back then. Not until the Nidaime- a notorious bookworm- famously brought the great library of the Senju with him when he assumed the mantle of Hokage. Over time, the library had only continued to grow; with more books and scrolls coming into the collection, additional wings and annexes were constructed until the library became the enormous sprawling complex it is today.

I could spend a lifetime in here, I imagine. I could be so happy.

But that's something best left for another time, I've got a mission today. I'm looking for a very specific item. I understand how to use a card catalogue, in concept, but it takes longer than I care to admit for me to find the single bookcase of fuuinjutsu materials tucked away in a distant corner. It's not much, I realize, as all the really good stuff is probably classified to high heaven. Most of the books are histories of the now extinct Uzushiogakure, infamous for its fuuinjutsu prowess (I'm interested, of course, but that's not my objective today).

 _Here we go._ It takes a stepladder for me to even see the higher shelves, but up at the top I catch a glimpse of some promising books.

I see a thick tome on _Fuuinjutsu from First Principles_ that I promise myself I'll understand some day, a handful of scrolls on medical seals equally beyond me, and a B-rank book of standard patterns.

That'll do.

* * *

FAQ:

Dear thesecretsix, I'm an economist and that's not how it works? Well, I really just know physics, so I made a little analogy applying a methodology for determining crystalline structures indirectly based on the effect of correlated phenomena on the potential to market/military stuff. We believe in reductionism around here- we claim everything's really the same core system, which is why you have so many physicists mucking around on wall street- so I'll take these liberties.

* * *

Thanks for all the supportive words, reviewers. This is the first bit of non-technical writing I'm sharing with the world, and it's really good to hear that people want me to keep going.

I split this chapter into a chapter and an interlude, for story purposes. Stay tuned for that.


	6. Interlude 2 - Ink

**Interlude 2 - _Ink_**

 **Yusei**

I settle down at my table, all of my tools laid out before me. My brush and inkwell, a small stack of high-quality sealing paper, my fuuinjutsu notebook- full of my personal notes, calculations, and observations- and the book of standard Konoha sealing patterns borrowed from the library.

I'm ready.

Before I apply any ink to paper, I make sure I can ground out any of my seals. The theory's simple enough- just disrupt the buildup of chakra in the seal before it reaches the critical point at which it will either a) do what it's supposed to do, or b) fail catastrophically. Since I'm working in a low-energy domain, simply cutting apart the paper should suffice.

I find myself thanking my anonymous fuuinjutsu mentor for emphasizing this safety measure, as my first storage seal begins to suck in air hungrily as feed some chakra into it. _That's not supposed to happen_. With a kunai, I quickly make three incisions across the major bases. Thankfully, my chakra that's wrapped up in the seal dissipates smoothly will no ill effects.

Not the most auspicious start to my fuuinjutsu career.

More careful inspection reveals that while I've been pretty successful inking most of the seal, I've written some of the characters and glyphs in the limiter sequence a little clumsily. It's a little surprising how a few squiggles here and there leads to the total negation of the controller; precision is clearly important in this craft.

With my most delicate hand, I deliberately ink out the storage seal on a fresh page. This time, I spend an extra minute making sure that I've replicated the sequences perfectly. This prudence is again to my benefit- I catch a stray drop of ink in the primary stabilizer that may, if I understand my fuuin-theory correctly, lead my array ripping appart whatever object I store in it.

A take a deep breath, suppressing my irritation, and try again. This time, I deem the characters clean enough to try activating the seal. " _Psssssssssh,"_ it sizzles merrily. " _Pssssssssh."_ Preoccupied as I was on producing clean characters with the brush, I've managed to actually draw out the wrong central sigil. Frustrated, I just watch the misshapen storage seal burn its image into my study table's surface.

Great, this is one failure I'll never forget. I'll be reminded of how shit I am at fuuinjutsu every time I look at my table.

My temper gets the better of me. "Fuck this stupid fucking brush. Why do we need to use the most archaic goddamned writing tools…"

Wait.

Why _do_ I need to use the brush? If it's just a matter of getting the ink onto the page in the correct pattern, why the hell won't a pen work? Obviously, I can't just pick up any old ballpoint and start writing- I'll have to load my carefully prepared ink- but really even a quill would probably be a huge improvement for me over the brush. After all, I've got decades of experience writing with a pen form-factor.

And now that I'm thinking about it, some people actually have utility seals tattooed _into their skin._ There's no way they do that with a brush- they'd have had to use a needle to convey the ink. They couldn't have done it with a chakra technique either, as that would interfere with and probably activate the seal itself. (The obvious exception to this rule, of course, being that if the goal was to activate the seal during the application process, than the preferred method of delivery would be some form of chakra technique. This makes sense for a number of combat seals, say, if the intention is to disable your opponent's chakra, or an always-active tracking seal. But, for example, the Anbu alert seal (the Anbu tattoo that I'd been denied, Shikaku-sensei citing my age as the reason) which lays dormant until activated to communicate an emergency, is applied manually using traditional Tebori[1] tattooing techniques.)

So there's no reason I can see that I'm bound to this brush save tradition.

Fuck tradition.

My first instinct is to adapt a pen I already have to take in the freshly mixed fuuinjutsu ink, but as I cut the back off one of my rollerball pens and try to drain the original synthetic ink, I realize that it's not a sustainable idea. I do, after all, intend to be an active fuuinjutsu user for the rest of my life. My next thought seems more reasonable, and I follow it, rushing out to purchase a basic fountain pen from the stationary shop I frequent (I have to buy all my notebooks somewhere).

I end up spending a bit more than expected to get the right pen, but my Tactical paycheck absorbs the cost with little issue. The pen I choose has a no-nonsense iron body and cap, and a chemically inert but chakra-conducting gold nib. I find that it's easy enough to load, as I grind my inkstick.

Sitting down at my table again, I can swiftly write out the familiar characters, the glyphs, and the central sigil just as I have in my notes. The final seal ends up being significantly smaller (by a factor of three) than the example pattern from the textbook, a fact attributable to the decreased line breadth of the pen compared to the traditional brush.

It's with no small trepidation that I feed my chakra into this seal. All the characters are clean and correct, and there's no stray ink on the page, but I have chosen a nonstandard writing tool. For all that I've theorized that my substitution is reasonable, I don't _know_ how that's going to change the seal.

But it works. I'm able to store my now obsolete calligraphy brush inside my brand new storage seal- I wouldn't test it with something that I actually wanted, after all- and with another application of chakra, withdraw it.

I ink and test another two storage seals, just to make sure my success wasn't a fluke. It wasn't.

Pleased, I flip through the book of patterns to figure out where to go from here. One thing stands out to me immediately: the basic exploding tag.

Hell. Yes.

Although...I should probably try this one outside.

* * *

[1] Tebori is a method of traditional Japanese hand-tattooing. From Wikipedia: "Steel needles, usually of greater diameter and steeper shoulder than those used in the West, are arranged in rows, singly or stacked, and are tied to a long handle of bamboo. This tool is held in the right hand, with the fingers of the left used to spread the skin to be tattooed. The shaft of the tebori tool rests on the thumb of the left hand and the needles inserted by the force of forward movement of the right arm of the tattoo artist. Unlike many other forms of hand-tattooing in Asia such as tatau or moko, no assistants are required for tebori."


	7. Interlude 3 - The Bar

**Interlude 3 - The Bar**

 **Shikaku**

* * *

I love my job, I really do. I'm literally paid to play games and solve puzzles all day- of course, the games are high stakes war games with real lives on the line, but when you're good enough, the stakes don't matter. I'm basically living the dream.

Some days, though, are incredibly boring. Today's tense political climate, with all five major countries gearing up for war, promises exciting problems in the near future. So far, though, all we've seen are minor skirmishes between the samurai armies of the Land of Fire and the Land of Earth. After the initial probing strikes, everyone's decided to back off and look for new openings.

Until they find them, there's just nothing for me to do.

It's actually a relief when Inoichi saunters into my office with a stack of new Intelligence reports for me to go over.

"Shika," he greets me, "Hey, could you try to look a little upset when I give you work? It's really… weird."

"Become a ninja, they said, see the world and meet interesting people. Ino, when was the last time you did something new? When was the last time you met someone new and interesting?"

He chuckles at my pessimism, as usual. "If you read these files, I think you'll find my answer to both of those questions."

"Fine, fine." I open up the first manilla folder, pushing past my nausea with years of practice. "Gross." Some new interrogation technique, I presume, by how excited Inoichi is. Not really my area, and I'm glad of it. I flip past grotesque pictures of mutilated foreigners to the information it's all in aid of.

At least it's useful this time, confirming some of our suspicions and corroborating some skeezy sources. So often, the stuff from T&I is just garbage; people will say almost anything under duress.

Inoichi waits for me to get through the important parts of the file before he cuts in again. "So, I can't help but notice you've got nothing to do right now. Nothing in your inbox, nothing in your outbox."

"You might remember having already made a joke about that?" Nothing's more annoying than a repetitive wiseass.

"But right outside your door, your little apprentice is working his heart out. He's got a stack of books on his desk, I swear it's taller than he is. So I guess what I'm asking is...what kind of lazy jackass makes his apprentice do all the work?"

"Yusei's a motivated kid," I tell him. "He just sort of does work on his own. Honestly, I don't really tell him to do stuff- he's troublesome enough as it is."

"So, um, how do you teach him?" asks Ino, because he doesn't think I can be a responsible adult. Shows what he knows.

"We've got a system that works for both of us. Yusei reads really… aggressively. I hired him into the division, so he can read anything in the Shinobi Library that he wants, and if he has any questions, we talk about them and I find him books that answer them. Sometimes he asks for Tactical work, like maybe once a week. Sometimes the boss gives him stuff to do."

Inoichi looks appalled. "That's definitely not how an apprenticeship is supposed to work. You're supposed to be imparting your knowledge to the next generation. Instead, you're slacking off and-" He's worked himself into a tizzy. "You pulled the kid out of the academy so he could act like you and goof around?"

I shrug. "It's not like he was learning anything there- he knew all the stuff already, you know? Besides, we tried the whole training together, imparting my knowledge, thing. It didn't go so well. We do what works for us, yeah? Relax, Ino. I talked to Hokage-sama, he's on board with this whole thing."

"Training... didn't go so well?" He sounds skeptical.

"We'll talk about it later." I remember that Inoichi's a pretty decent sensor, "Maybe you can help Yusei with a thing." He's also an expert on the human mind, which never fails to come in handy.

Give him an inch and he takes a mile. "How about this evening? I'll get the gang together- Chouza, Mikoto, Minato, maybe Kushina and Shibi, we can hit up some bars or something?"

I agree just to get rid of him, and Ino leaves wearing his 'I won this' face. No doubt he's planning some sort of intervention tonight. Hopefully, I haven't bit off more than I can chew.

* * *

We're all in our mid twenties- practically old men- so we meet up just after sunset at _The Furnace_ , Chouza's favorite bar/barbecue. It's not really my scene, but Cho doesn't complain when I take us to all the whiskey joints. I split a beef dish with Inoichi over some beer, and the three of us make some small talk, catching up on each other's lives. It's been awful long since we've just hung out like this.

Chouza's wooing a girl, it turns out. Her name, he tells us, is Chiharu and he's in love with her. He's already taken the first step of the traditional Akimichi courtship ritual, sending a gift of his beloved's favorite cured meats.

 _What a strange world_ ,I think to myself _, where Cho can find the one women in the village with strong opinions about cured meats._

Minato arrives shortly thereafter, his customary navy blue jumpsuit littered with fresh grass stains. He must have been out in the training fields with his new apprentice; no doubt he'll join Ino in haranguing me over my training methods. A few minutes later, Kushina and Mikoto show up.

Since it's no longer just the three of us, Inoichi and Chouza wrap up their discussion of Chiharu's _finer points_ with a hurried whisper.

Ever the busybody, Ino's always getting in everyone else's business. It's adorable in some silly way, that a grown man could ever love gossip so much- at least until one considers his role as the current deputy head of ANBU Torture and Interrogation, which puts Ino's interfering in an altogether more sinister light.

Of course, having grown up with the man, I know that he really is just a prying fussbudget.

His plan is entirely transparent to me: he's going to get Minato and Mikoto- the experienced teachers- to present the argument that I'm not training Yusei appropriately. Minato, a control freak who's recently taken an apprentice of the same age as Yusei, is guaranteed to hate my methods of dealing with what he perceives to be a similar situation to his own. Mikoto, another highly structured individual but with perhaps a little more social insight, will reinforce Minato's points while tempering them with the understanding that our respective students might learn in different ways. Chouza's here to be my moral support, to make me feel that the entire world _is not_ against me; Ino's brought him to make sure I move in a positive direction after his A-team rips me apart. I'm not certain where Kushina fits into this. She's either been brought here to throw me off the trail or because she and Minato are a package deal these days. Regardless, she's a bit of a wildcard, and one of the weak points of Inoichi's strategy.

Ino's not bad, but I play in the big leagues.

There are so many moves I can make that lead to a positive endgame for me, but- and I constantly have to remind myself of this fact- I'm among friends. Rather than maximizing my gain at everyone's expense, I need to minimize our net loss.

Succinctly, the victory condition can be stated as follows: all participants must believe that they've gained something from this interaction. Of course, it's not a one size fits all; each participant seeks to gain something different. That's where I'm going to have to actually do some thinking.

Some are straightforward enough: Inoichi needs to feel that he's improved the life of my student by organizing his little intervention. Chouza needs to feel like we're back in the good ol' days, before we grew and team Ino-Shika-Cho started to grow apart.

Any solution containing a positive result for each of the remaining three players will also contain a winning solution for Ino and Cho. Unfortunately, that leaves the system slightly underdetermined; I can come up with more solutions that satisfy my victory condition than I can effectively rule out without deeper investigation. Theoretically, I take any of a dozen different routes through this conversation and come out alright- but my pride won't let me take anything but the best.

The waiter notices that we've filled out our table and comes by again, asking Minato, Kushina, and Mikoto what they'll have. As I take the opportunity to put in an order for another beer, it hits me. I need to expand my system.

Optimizing for not only Minato, Kushina, Mikoto, and myself, but also for the growth of my apprentice rules out all but a few solutions. The key, though, is to always think bigger. If I step all the way back and consider that a win for my village is a win for me, then a win for any Leaf shinobi is a win for me. Thus newly minted genin Hatake Kakashi, rival of my little apprentice and miniscule bastard extraordinaire, becomes the determining factor.

This strategy's lynchpin is the fact that Yusei and Kakashi need to become better shinobi. My goal is to not change my teaching methods. Therefore, I need to make Minato feel like his approach to teaching Kakashi is not as good as the way I'm teaching Yusei. Eternal perfectionist Minato has one obvious weakness: Uzumaki Kushina, who can always be counted on to be a wild card. She's also a self-taught fuuinjutsu master (the Uzumaki possess a natural intuition for the sealing arts, and Kushina is no exception), and I should be able to convince her to speak up on the value of self-guided learning if I mention Yusei's skills at the same. Kushina's words will make Minato feel inadequate as nothing I might say can, and he'll seek Mikoto's advice on becoming a better teacher. He'll also probably push Kakashi to start learning fuuinjutsu, which can really only be a good thing- we need more fuuinjutsu experts, after all.

Meanwhile, I sit here on the sidelines looking spiffy. And if I should overhear some useful information that makes me a better sensei, well, that can only be a benefit. Every conversation is a battle to be won, after all. (Maybe I'll even solve _that problem_ without asking Ino for help)

Here, everybody wins. Especially me.

The returning waiter thumps a new beer in front of me, snapping me out of my thoughts. I tune into the conversation, just as Inoichi starts his setup: "So, Minato, Shikaku, how are your new students?"

Minato's happy to share, "Kakashi's a good kid. He's very...exact...about everything. Picks up everything I show him on the first try-" He looks like he's got more to say, but he's cut off by Kushina's laughter.

"What he means," she says with a chuckle, "is that he's never met anyone with a bigger stick up their ass. I mean, the stick's gotta be bigger than the pipsqueak."

"Kushina," sighs a long-suffering Minato. "You can't just say things like that- he's a kid. It's...not appropriate at all." Shrugging, he tells the rest of us, "But she's not wrong. Kakashi takes everything far too seriously, it's driving me mad. Once he's old enough to take missions, I might pick up some more kids- fill out the team- just to socialize him a little."

"Good luck. If you listen to Yusei's opinions on the subject, your apprentice is the most evil creature to walk on two legs." I jump into the conversation. "Apparently, Kakashi told him he'd never make it as a ninja, and to just give up."

Everyone makes a face at that one. That's _not_ the way to treat one's allies. There's no official rule against it, but it's considered poor form to shit on another Konoha ninja's hopes and dreams.

Ino takes the opportunity to push his agenda. "So, how's Yusei doing, then? It looked like you were keeping him busy over in Tactical."

This is the point where I can turn this conversation around, my chance to execute my flawless plan. But as I open my mouth to speak, I'm struck by a sudden impulse. An uncharacteristic sincerity takes over, and I find myself taking another route.

"Well, he's inking his own seals now- actually, Minato, do you have any more of Jiraiya-sama's notes? He's flown through all the stuff you gave me- and he picks up some jobs for the division when he feels like it. Actually, his current goal seems to be to read through the entire general library…. and he's making good progress on it. Some of the stuff he works on, honestly, goes above my head- you know me, I'm more of a logic guy. But Utatane-sama keeps telling me Yusei's math theories are on point, so that takes up a lot of his time right now."

Well, that's not quite what I meant to say, but it's not the worst information to have out there. _My apprentice is clever as hell, what about yours?_ I can still rescue this. But by mouth keeps going, surprising me with its earnestness. "But actually, Ino, you remember the thing I mentioned this morning?"

"About training 'not going so well,' you mean?"

"Yeah." And then I put it out there. My secret shame; the reason I wanted to avoid this very conversation. Damn this beer for loosening my lips. "Yusei can't...do any ninjutsu. At all. None of the things we tried. And...his mind is...ill suited for genjutsu, I think. His transformations and clones come out all weird."

There's an awkward silence for a about a minute, as my statement sinks in. Then the theorizing starts, and it's almost worst.

Surprisingly, it starts with Chouza. "Maybe he's just too young to control his chakra?"

Minato counters, "That can't be it, Kakashi's the same age."

"And Shikaku said his genjutsu works, it's just weird," Kushina pipes up. "Actually, what does that mean?"

And then that becomes the common refrain, "Weird how?"

There's nothing for it but the truth, at this point. I start to describe the hyperrealistic faces Yusei wore when we tried the transformation technique- the eerie skins; the way everything was in focus at all times, the pores, the individual veins in his eyes; the angles, too precise, too _correct_ to make up a human; the man who had been dissected and reassembled, at least in the boy's mind, before he became a skin to wear- and the way Yusei didn't realize that anything was wrong with his transformation, looking in the mirror. I'd asked him to try transforming into me. I swiftly came to regret that decision. I regret it even more every time I close my eyes.

And the theory that terrifies me, that I've already entertained and thrown out because _please let it not be true_ , comes via the genjutsu mistress Uchiha Mikoto: "Genjutsu is all about matching minds with one another. It's common for minds that don't interact with the world in a...typical… manner to express themselves... differently. In ways we don't comprehend appropriately" She's phrased it delicately, but her meaningful glance towards Inoichi makes it clear what she means.

It's always been clear that Yusei isn't neurotypical- even in shinobi society, where children grow up far too soon, it's unheard of for a five year old to develop new mathematics, or comprehend the inner algebras of fuuinjutsu so naturally. But this brilliance comes at some price, and we still don't know what it is.

I order another drink to shore me up against whatever terror is to come. This time, everybody joins me. God bless solidarity.

If I lost this game, I lost it long before Ino's intervention. No, this game was decided one sunny morning last week on training ground three.

* * *

FAQ:

Dear thesecretsix, why so slow? Well, grad school got really hard all of a sudden, halfway through the semester. And then this chapter sort of got out of hand. I'm really into describing inconsequential things in way too much detail, and I had to keep stopping myself deliberately. Oh, and then I had to move. So yeah, this ended up taking like a month or something. Whoops. But it's here now.

Dear thesecretsix, what's wrong with Yusei? Shhhhh… can't give anything away. (I'll give you a silly little hint, it's the premise of this story).

* * *

Thanks for all the positive reviews. It really did keep me from forgetting to write, which meant that this chapter got done...eventually.


	8. Ch 4 - Training

**Yusei**

I'm in the habit of bringing lunch to my desk- more time for reading that way- but every so often, Shikaku-sensei drags me along to the cafe just around the corner that he frequents. Today is one of those days, and I'm really not happy about it. Boss-lady Utatane asked me to write up a whitepaper on the economic impact of the impending war between Rain and River countries, and I could definitely be using this time to brush up on the geography of the region.

Not that I don't know it already, but it's best to have these things fresh in the mind. A miscalculation on my part might result in the wrong wars breaking out, after all.

And if I knock this paper out soon, I can take some time for personal development. I'm hoping to work out the kinks on some of my modifications to standard seals this evening.

But just before noon, sensei pops out of his office and tells me to lighten up; "Hey Yusei, put your sorry bento away," he says as he drags me out of the office, "We're headed to Tanaka's today." Shikaku whistles merrily, as whatever he's got planned is sure to waste a significant proportion of our workday. I sigh, mentally crumpling up my plans for the day and tossing them into the wastebin.

It takes only minute to get to the cafe, and we're seated quickly enough. The waitress comes along and asks for our orders almost immediately. Sensei speaks for the both of us, as I've yet to see a menu. "I'll just have my usual, please, and hmm-" he turns to me, "you like sushi, right?" I nod. "And one daily special, then."

As the waitress heads to the back with the order, I poke fun at sensei: "You have a usual? What, do you eat the same thing every day?"

He shrugs. "Every day that I come here, I guess? But I rotate through all the shops in the area, you know. A different one every meal."

Oh wow. _Every meal_ , he says, implying that he's eating out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I'm only five here, and I cook my own meals. Sure, applying that standard is almost certainly cheating, but I could compare Shikaku's diet to that of my original life during my late teens. It's a little pathetic for a 'proper adult' like sensei.

And wait, don't the Nara provide meals and support to their active shinobi? They're one of the Konoha's oldest clans, having followed the Akimichi in during the very founding of the village. If I recall correctly- a figure of speech, of course I recall correctly- only the Inuzuka own more land than the Nara (Interestingly, both clans leave most of their land undeveloped; the Inuzuka for their dogs, the Nara for their deer. If we compare developed land only, the Uchiha and the Hyuuga lead the pack). But for some reason, Shikaku doesn't live with his family. No, instead he lives in an apartment building like I do, in the residential district.

Not at all what I'd expect for an established jounin from a respected clan.

Wrapped in my ruminations, I'm taken off guard when the waitress returns, bearing our meals. The daily special, it turns out, consists of a small miso soup, a seaweed salad, some leafy greens smothered in ginger dressing, and an assortment of sushi and nigiri arranged in an aesthetically pleasing arc. Quite the step up from my rice, meat, and sauce, stir fried to 'perfection' and served in an aluminum tin- you won't hear me complain about this meal any more, that's for sure.

I glance over the table to sensei's meal of yakitori and beer. _Uhhh, that's his usual? Which one of us is the adult here? How is he remotely in shape right now?_

We eat in a pleasant silence for a few minutes, as I savor the high-quality sushi and sensei enjoys his beer.

"So Yusei, did you have a chance to look into what we'd discussed last week?"

He's referring, of course, to that catastrophic training session where I discovered my inability to manage even the most basic of ninjutsu and create convincing genjutsu of any nature. And here I was hoping that might excuse me from becoming a proper combatant. No dice, apparently.

"No, sensei. I… decided to double down on my strengths in training. I've been making good progress particularly with my fuuinjutsu in the last few days." A good ninja should have no weaknesses, but a passable ninja merely needs to have several reasonable strengths (and to hide their weaknesses where nobody will ever look). "I'm also considering taking up a longer ranged weapon, perhaps the bow and arrow, as a delivery mechanism for seals in combat."

"Not a bad idea," he agrees, "but you shouldn't sell yourself short. I'm sure this is something you can overcome without too much effort." A great ninja turns their weaknesses into their strengths and pretends their strengths are weaknesses, so the enemy attacks their strongest points.

Or am I thinking about shogi? Whatever, it's all the same trick.

Sensei continues theorizing, "Personally, I'd bet on this being some kind of mental block. That's a lot more likely than this being one of those 'you're too young to shape your chakra' things, at least from what Minato says. And he's got a bit of experience with these things now."

 _Grrrrr, Kakashi. Of course he can use ninjutsu._ If anything's going to motivate me, it's my rapidly growing inferiority complex- or that's what Shikaku-sensei thinks. The way he's been mashing that button is getting a little obvious, lately, and I think I might actually be doing better than the bastard these days. After all, only one of us is a member of ANBU right now. But that's for me to know, and for Shikaku to only think he knows. This way I'll see his attempts to manipulate me from a mile away.

But I realize he's said something else that's a little strange. "You think a mental block is something easy to work past?" I ask incredulously. It seems like a lot more time and effort than he'd be willing to put in, honestly.

Sensei grins. "It's the easiest damned thing ever with a Yamanaka around. So my buddy Ino'll be joining us after lunch to take a look at your situation. You've met him, I think? Tall, blonde, wears his ponytail way up here?"

Fuck.

There's a lot in my head that I don't want anyone to see, let alone the deputy head of intelligence. If Yamanaka Inoichi goes poking around in my head, the best case scenario is that I end up in an asylum.

I'm not even going to think about the worst case.

I'm already panicking.

The rest of lunch tastes like sand to me.

* * *

Another half-hour finds us at the nearby training ground five- one of the few reserved for ANBU use- just down the street from our offices. As we wait for Inoichi, sensei has me run through my taijutsu katas.

"Make sure you follow through on those kicks, Yusei." He lays at the base of a tree, enjoying its shade, periodically offering me bits of taijutsu advice. And here I was worried that we might start training seriously or something.

I adjust my form to address his criticism and finish out the kata. "So you think the bow and arrow would be a good fit for my style, then?" I ask, once I've caught my breath. "Let's be honest, I won't have the build of a close-combat type for at least a decade. I could probably beat up an untrained five year old now, or maybe a ninja toddler. But that's about it."

Sensei props his head up a bit and squints at me. "Eh, you're a bit too young to talk about your style right now. You'll want to just work on everything for a while yet. Don't limit yourself this early, you know? But what I'm saying is, yeah, learn all the weapons you can. Just don't ever choose _not_ to learn something. That'll only ever come back to bite ya." He punctuates this point by letting his head plunk back again. Closing his eyes, he continues, "Which is why you're not getting out of this, yeah? We'll figure out what's going on with your jutsu. But Ino's running a bit late and there's no sense in you wearing yourself out before he gets here."

Reaching into his jounin vest's left chest pocket, Shikaku produces a well-worn deck of cards. "Let's play a game to pass the time," he says, holding it out for me to take.

"Go ahead and shuffle it," he tells me. As I do so, he goes on: "Now go ahead and deal."

Well, that's missing some critical information. "How many cards?" I ask, and for good measure, "And what are we playing?"

"Cards," He leaves that hanging, making it clear that the word is his answer to both of my questions. God damnit. Sensing my mounting ire, he offers a clarification. "That's the game. I don't tell you the rules of the game, I only tell you if you break have to figure out the rules of the game, and try to win. Don't worry, though- I'll start off simply. Go ahead and deal."

This could be interesting.

I quickly deal out two stacks of five cards, the typical hand size for most card games I know.

"You lost," sensei informs me.

Oh, it's _that_ kind of game. I shuffle the cards again, and deal out a hand more carefully this time, laying cards out pair by pair and pausing briefly after each one. After the third pair of cards are dealt, Shikaku instructs me to go ahead and read out his hand- apparently he's not planning on getting up for this. "Ace of diamonds, nine of hearts, and three of spades." I compare it to my own hand, a five, seven, and ace of clubs.

A brief moment passes where I wait for the next instruction, but sensei only asks me "Well, can you tell me who won?"

Well, shit. That's a hell of a question. If we're playing some sort of high card game, Shikaku should win; we've both got aces, but his next best is a nine to my seven. But if we're assuming some suit order and one of our aces is worth more, it's a tossup. Maybe Shikaku's throwing me a curveball, though, and it's a low card game; he'd still win with that three versus my five. But hell, there's no restriction saying that we're playing a game that straightforward. What if the victory condition is related to the number of runs we have (I'd win) or the number of cards of like suit (again, my game). Or maybe, the victor is decided by drawing a specific card? For all I know, anyone with an Ace is a winner (so we'd tie).

 _Ohhhh, but I do have one more piece of information_. At this point, Shikaku knows only his own cards. Apparently, he can tell who's won with that information alone. Therefore, the only possible games we can be playing are games where the knowledge of his hand is enough to define a winner.

"Assuming some sort of generality rule on the victory conditions- that is to say, each player is beholden to the same rules, so you can't say that the game is determined by a particular player not possessing a particular card- you won."

The condition I'm imposing basically prevents sensei from saying that I won because he didn't have a queen in his hand. Without it, the game is determined by some combination of factors that didn't occur; it's a total exercise in futility.

"Good catch, yeah. That's a rule we need to have, if any of these are going to be solvable." He says it as if catching that wasn't part of the game. Maybe it wasn't? I guess we're past the point where everything is a test. "And sure, good job, but if I won, you still lost."

"What's the point, then? It's random. I figured out the rules, didn't I? That's winning the game we're actually playing." I might be a little salty about this twist.

"What's the point?" Sensei chuckles, "Yusei, what's the point of figuring out the rules if that doesn't help you win? Besides, you should know better than to complain about something being random." Still laying on his back with his eyes shut, Shikaku raises one finger in the air. "First of all, life is rarely _really_ random. Consider the game we just played- no doubt, you figured out that the only category of games that would be determined by the information I had available were the magic card/magic combination games. Or at least, that's what's left when you impose your generality condition. But consider my end of that game: in order to present you with a solvable problem, what did I have to do?"

And now it's obvious. "You couldn't decide what the magic card or combination was until I told you what cards were in your hand. Because if you hadn't won the game, it would be impossible to know whether I had won or if we'd tied without you also knowing what cards were in my hand."

"Exactly. So it turns out the game is not very random at all." Another finger joins the first. "Secondly: never complain about randomness in a game- it's one of the fairest things that exists...when it exists."

"But wait," I protest, "that mean the game was never winnable, even though the problem was solvable. Under these rules, you can just choose any card in your hand to be the winning card."

Sensei chuckles. "Only if you want to think like a mathematician. You see, you assumed that I was presenting you with a problem that I knew the answer to- a fully determined problem- but in general, that's not the case at all. There's no guarantee that the information someone reacts to is complete; for any given scenario, your opponent might be lacking crucial information.

"Consider the following scenario: an opposing military force enters your territory, and you want to position your own troops to protect points that a) are critical for the survival of your people and troops, and b) are likely to be attacked. You can make this decision based on your knowledge of your cities, roads, outposts, etc. Or, you might make this decision based on your opponent's knowledge of your infrastructure. Which is the correct choice here, Yusei?"

"Presumably, I have better information about my own territory than my opponent. If I choose to defend the structures that are important to me, I can avoid gambling on the quality of my enemies information." In a world of shinobi, it seems pretty reasonable to assume that they have fairly up to date information anyways.

"But in our card game, you chose to make your decision based on what I could possibly know."

Again I protest, "The situations aren't really analogous. It's not like you had the opportunity to send your spies to map out my hand. This is just a game."

Smirking triumphantly, sensei finally pushes himself to an upright position and opens his eyes. "Life's a game, Yusei, and I'm going to teach you how to win." _Oh, he's been sitting on that for years, hasn't he._ "Besides, who said I didn't know your cards? We're using my deck, after all."

A peal of laughter startles me from my response to Shikaku's cheating before I embarrass myself ( _Yusei,_ he'd have chastised me, _We're shinobi, cheating's just another tactic)._ Apparently, Yamanaka Inoichi arrived while sensei and I were debating.

"Sorry," says Inoichi with a snicker, "I didn't want to interrupt your teachable moment. But Yusei, here's another lesson for you: always bring your own cards to a game with this scoundrel. He's bent up the edges on his deck so he can identify them by the sounds they make against one another."

That's surprisingly badass, actually. I'm not even mad anymore.

"Scoundrel?" responds sensei, feigning offense. "I resent your implications. Besides, you're the one who's an hour late. What do you have to say for yourself?"

Inoichi indicates the small leather satchel he's carrying. "I had a last-moment idea, and I needed permission from pops to get this gear."

"Do you really think…" Clearly, Shikaku-sensei knows what's going on here. I for one don't. "If that's what's happening…" He trails off before getting to the critical information in that sentence.

Inoichi manages to complete the thought without elucidating anything, "Wouldn't that explain everything?"

A tension I hadn't previously perceived seems to leave Shikaku's shoulders. "Yes." I can only wonder what he was worried about…

And suddenly I've frozen up, probably from the terror of Inoichi's impending mind-walking, the subsequent discovery of my past life, declaration of insanity, and forthcoming institutionalization. When I snap back to the current situation, it's to the sight of Inoichi crouching in front of me, slowly moving his finger across the plane of my vision.

"Hey, it's okay," He reassures me, "Don't freak out. We're not going to do any mind-walking today. Seriously, that was never the plan. It's….not a pleasant process. Honestly, my clan would probably cast me out if I used that technique on a child." He goes on. "We're just going to do some tests. I have a theory on what's going on, and it's common enough that we've got equipment specifically for this, okay?"

"Ino, don't treat him like a typical kid, okay? That's not going to calm him down. Just start from the beginning and explain it like you would to me."

"Okay, so, I'm sure you know that chakra is basically made up of mental/spiritual and physical energies- yin and yang?" He waits for me to nod before continuing. "Well, so, most techniques are formed by carefully balancing the proportions of mental and physical energy. Elemental techniques tend to be vastly physical energy, with some particular amount of mental energy to shape any particular element. Other ninjutsu, like the substitution technique you're struggling with, look for a more one-to-one ratio. Genjutsu, as you might expect, tend to ask for a greater mental contribution tempered by a miniscule physical component to ground it to reality. Are you following so far?"

"Sure," I agree. I think I see where this is going.

"Well, my theory is that you've got a bit more yin chakra than yang. I mean, you're disproportionately intelligent for your physical development, so it would follow logically that you'd have more mental energy. Yeah?"

If only he knew just how much older my mind was than my body- no wonder my chakra's out of whack… "And this is not uncommon, you said?" I have to ask, because it seems like such a specific problem to have. I mean, unless there are a bunch of weird reincarnated ninja like me running around (but surely I'd notice…?).

"Well, that's where we get into some...personal territory." Inoichi trades a significant glance with Shikaku, who nods, giving him the go-ahead. "So, um, this isn't common knowledge- don't go spreading it around, alright? What do you know about our clans? The Yamanaka and the Nara?"

I'm passable in my regional history, or at least whatever version of it is publically available. "The earliest records date back to the early warring states period. The leader of the Akimichi clan, Choumaru the butterfly sage, passed away without passing on his contract. Without his techniques to fill in for the traditional weaknesses of the Akimichi family tradition, Choumaru's eldest son Chouna found it necessary to make peace with the two neighboring clans to remain competitive with the Hyuuga- just to the south- and the Aburame-Inuzuka alliance to their west. Led by Chouna's son, Chouzano the conqueror, the new Akimichi-Yamanaka-Nara alliance was able to take and hold the central plains of the Land of Fire from the Aburame-Inuzuka. However, they only held the territory for about five years, losing it to the rapidly growing Uchiha-"

I continue to blather on about the history of the Akimichi, Yamanaka, and Nara clans during the warring states era in perhaps a bit too much detail for quite some time before I wise up to Inoichi's flabbergasted look.

"-so Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara sent Senju Raika to put an end to the Inuzuka revolt. Angered by their treatment at the hands of the newly founded Konohagakure but crippled by Raika's actions, the Inuzuka hired the Nara clan to assassinate Raika. This assassination was carried out by Nara Shikanami, who was captured, tortured, and publicly executed by Uzumaki Mito. Angered, her close friend and trusted ally Chouma led an alliance of the Akimichi, Nara, Yamanaka, Aburame, and Hyuuga against the Senju and Uchiha controlled village. It was here that Shodaime-sama raised the first iteration of the Leaf's famous walls, and Chouma gained the epithet 'the siege engine' for knocking them down. As the besieging alliance crippled the early Konoha's business, the soon-to-be Nidaime urged his brother to treat with their leaders. This treaty- known as the Treaty of Five, after the five noble clans that participated (the Akimichi, Aburame, Hyuuga, Uchiha, and Senju)- created the village we know today, with the five noble clans at the heart of the governing council."

I've been talking for a while now, so I pause. "Did I say something wrong? Sometimes I get the names mixed up, I guess. They're all so similar."

"I think Ino was asking more about the nature of our clan techniques," says Shikaku-sensei, familiar with my impression of an encyclopedia.

Inoichi manages to lift his jaw off the ground, "Well, I think it's obvious you know what I'm getting at, but let me fill in some gaps. Much as the Akimichi specialize in Yang chakra techniques, the Nara and Yamanaka's shadow and mind-jutsu are fundamentally Yin chakra techniques. It's common practice in both clans to focus on the early schooling of our young, as a nudge to develop both the habit of intellectual excellence and the greater-than-average mental energies required by our family techniques. Every so often, a child is born whose genetics predispose him or her to have as much as double or triple the amount of Yin chakra. It's not unusual for such a child to have trouble shaping more physically inclined techniques, but they're usually able to compensate for that by working on our clan jutsu.

"Anyway, this balance of energies is important enough to our clans that we've developed specialized equipment to measure it." Here, Inoichi opens the leather satchel, and from it produces an ornate wooden box and a small woven mat. Unfurling the mat and kneeling to one side, he gestures for me to kneel on the other.

Reverently, Inoichi lifts the lid off the box, revealing two glass globes, a brush, and a small bottle of some brown liquid. "Extend your hands," he tells me, holding his own palm down in front of him. As I mimic him, he coats the backs of my hands with whatever the brown liquid is.

 _Weird,_ I think _, Why is it warm?_

And then the coppery smell hits.

It's clearly blood.

Why is this blood.

Why is this blood brown?

Oh my god he just painted my skin with blood.

Why is this happening?

He turns my hands over, and gently curls my fingers around the glass orbs. "Focus," he tells me.

"Sorry, I'm too busy panicking over the fucking blood you painted me with," is what I mean to say. What I actually say is more like "B...blood…"

"Don't worry, it's not human." He says it like that's supposed to reassure me. "Now, focus. Channel your chakra to your hands, and the apparatus will do the rest."

"The sooner you get this over with, the sooner you can clean your hands," sensei chimes in.

Fuck it. Let's get this over with.

I channel my chakra to my hands, and immediately have to shut my eyes to protect them from the aggressively sharp violet light the globe in my left hand produces.

"Stop stop stop stop stop." It's Inoichi's turn to sound worried. I immediately stop. "I've never seen that reaction before."

I hold the globes out to him. He takes the one in my right hand with no trouble, but jumps back from the one in my left as if he's been burned. "Just, uh, hold on for a second. But let me get that for you," he pulls out a small handkerchief and wipes the (animal?) blood off my hands. "Okay, just put that back in the box."

Now that I'm not freaking out about my blood-soaked hands, I manage to connect a few thoughts coherently.

Yamanaka Inoichi said it's rare but not unheard of for a clan child to have a three-to-one ratio of mental to physical energy.

This measurement apparatus requires the subject to channel their chakra to their hands. The average shinobi trainee learns to channel chakra precisely for such a feat around the age of eleven, at the end their third year of the academy. A clan child might learn to control their chakra around eight. A prodigy, as I have to assume these gifted-from-birth children are, might channel their chakra as early as four or five (consistent with myself or Kakashi).

Presumably, these five-year-olds don't have the memories of a lifetime spent in academia.

If a five-to-ten-year-old nerd-child might manage to have triple the typical Yin chakra, how much would a sixty-five-year-old mega-nerd in the body of a five-year-old have?

Conclusion: I'm fucked. I'll never balance my chakra enough to perform any of these techniques in a reasonable manner.

Shikaku's missing one of the puzzle pieces- knowledge of my reincarnation- but a quick glance at sensei's furrowed brow tells me that he's well on their way to the same conclusion. Inoichi, bless his heart, continues to stare perplexed at the Yin orb that seems to have betrayed him.

"I'll have to ask the elders," he begins, "Maybe it's faulty."

With eerie synchronization, Shikaku and I tell him, "It's not."

Shikaku continues, "This stays between the three of us." He considers for a second, then amends his statement. "Rather, it can be a public secret that Yusei has an overabundance of mental energy. That's a fact that would surprise nobody. The exact magnitude of this problem, however, remains between us."

Inoichi and I nod gravely at this, and then the three of us sit in silence for a minute, and then another.

Finally, I speak up. "So I guess the question is 'how fucked am I?'" Inoichi nods along morosely, but Shikaku-sensei grins viciously.

"That's where you're wrong, Yusei." He starts to chuckle, which turns into a full bore laugh. "The question," he says, and then pauses dramatically.

"The _correct_ question to ask is 'how do I use this to win?'"

* * *

Instead of the usual bullshit I call a FAQ, I want to use this space to mention Vaengir's story _Iryo-nin Kasa_. Vaengir's a great writer- much better than me- and if you're interested in the SI OC genre you're most likely familiar with _INK_. If you're not, I'd like to recommend it. Some of the ways I want to play with a rotating ensemble of narrators are very much inspired by _INK_ 's chapters 81-88, which were fresh in my mind as I started planning _Iome_.

Vaengir recently confessed to being in a mentally dark place, and their words hit me very close to home. They've mentioned the impact that supportive readers have had on their life. I hope my recommendation might get them even one more reader.

Thanks for putting up with me, y'all, and thanks for your support.


	9. Interlude 4 - Errata

**Interlude 4 - Errata. Some more erratic than others.**

 **I: Arrows and Explosions - Yusei**

The trick to archery, it turns out, is not overthinking it.

For me, that's easier said than done. I'm a habitual overthinker. I might even be addicted to overthinking things.

Hitting a stationary target is completely trivial- I'm doing alright at that part, and I can put arrow exactly where I want it- but it's not the most useful skill in my profession. After all, I need to hit moving targets. Moving human targets, who might be aware that I'm shooting at them.

And I can't let my brain reduce that to the simple kinematics problem I'm convinced it ought to be, because real people tend to not enjoy being shot at. They do this "dodging" thing that I'm not a huge fan of.

So yeah, you have to get a "feel" for archery.

Not to say that my flawless grasp of the elementary physics, ability to calculate trajectories nearly instantaneously, and talent for extrapolation don't come in handy. Of course they do. It's just... a few steps away from being natural right now. And that's where I need to be.

Only thing for it is practice. So here I am, for the fifteenth time this month, at the ABNU training facility's Dynamic Targeting Range. The DTR is a masterwork of gears, pulleys, levers, and fuuinjutsu, providing targets that move in a partially randomized manner intended to simulate the behavior of an aware target. It's got a number of difficulty levels and distance settings, configurable to the nth degree as to provide almost every possible ranged combat scenario.

I fucking love it.

Shikaku-sensei, dragged along to my practice sessions far too often for his liking, loathes it.

He doesn't know anything about archery, I think. From his assorted mumblings and whinings, I've pieced together that it's a niche skill and that he regrets encouraging me to develop it. But he does the job of a dutiful sensei and comes along to offer me tips whenever he has time.

By now, I've put enough time and effort in that I can ace the course on all but it's most difficult settings, where it blends close, mid, and far ranged targets moving at chunin and jounin level speeds (While I definitely can't move that quickly right now, a well prepared arrow can).

"Ready?" asks sensei. I give him a nod, stringing my compound bow with a practiced motion and nocking my first arrow. "Go!"

The first target, the silhouette of a crouching man, springs up about thirty feet away and slides rapidly to the right. I nail it with an arrow through its right eye. I'm lucky with the second and third targets in the mid-range as well- I've got the time to draw, aim, and fire appropriately, but the fourth target comes in closer. At only ten feet away, its quick diagonal strafing allows it to traverse a sizable arc. I have to actually turn my shoulders and realign my bow before I can loose an arrow. And while I'm not so green that I miss completely, my less than ideal shot connects with the chest where it might be deflected by a standard-issue flack vest.

The rest of the two-minute long course goes about the same as those first ten seconds- about three-quarters of my shots are on target, with the remainder landing glancing blows at best.

A seventy-five percent accuracy rating on this course puts me somewhere below intermediate level with this weapon.

I'm disappointed with myself.

Still, it's a slight improvement over my performance yesterday.

Sensei must be thinking the same way. "En-four-ell?" he asks me, naming the fourth level long-distance-ninjutsu program I've been honing my destructive fuuinjutsu on.

"Let's do the fireball one instead," I tell him. "I want to get these explosions right."

The second reason I love the ANBU DTR is the set of protocols built into it for rough-and-rowdy destructive ninjutsu specialists to practice. This is, I think, the coolest thing the DTR has: regenerating targets.

From what I've gathered, the first iteration of this course was actually constructed by the legendary Sannin in their youth. Sandaime-sama, in possession of only finite patience, grew weary of the trail of destruction that followed his three prodigious students across Konoha's training grounds. Between Orochimaru's neverending arsenal of ninjutsu, Jiraiya's nigh-infinite explosions (and giant amphibians), and the worst of the three: Tsunade's earth shattering punches, the Third Hokage's students routinely managed to ruin every training facility in the village in the space of a week. After numerous complaints from the rest of his shinobi, the Sandaime took decisive action. He forbade Jiraiya, Tsunade, and Orochimaru from using any training field that they hadn't constructed themselves.

From there, the legends diverge. Some say that the regeneration mechanism grew out of Orochimaru's dark and secretive researches. Others say that the course itself is alive, and uses Tsunade's famous Genesis Rebirth to piece itself back together each time. Nobody at all says that Jiraiya's mastery of space-time warping fuuinjutsu makes the whole thing possible (by shinobi gossip standards, making this legend the most likely to be true).

Whatever it is, I've been rather firmly told that I'm not allowed to investigate it. Alas.

The fireball routine I've asked Shikaku-sensei to load up tests my ability to incinerate a target without hitting it directly. It pairs quite well with my new variable-yield explosive tags, still in their "field testing" phase.

I torch the shit out of those targets (and hopefully not much else).

There's a saying where I'm from: close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. This game is definitely in the latter category, and my accuracy reflects that. It tends to matter less exactly how accurate I am with some of the arrows, since I only need to get within a few feet to set off an explosion that consumes the target.

It's a shame that each explosion completely consumes one of my arrows as well. I've had to replace hundreds of arrows this month alone- imagine how bad it'll be if I start using this technique as the mainstay of my combat style.

When I bring these points up to Shikaku-sensei, he chuckles. "You're getting pretty good at this," he tells me. "Don't get yourself too worried about it. And besides, you can always pick up more skills to fill in the gaps."

"What would you suggest?" I'm thinking of designing a seal that might send off a pulse of electricity on impact. Maybe that'd make up for my less-than-excellent accuracy with moving targets, while avoiding dealing fatal damage my targets and destroying all my arrows.

"What do you think about using poisons?" suggests sensei. "It'd also synergize pretty well with your talent with senbon."

Not a bad idea. I can always whip up a seal to cover a weakness, but learning the art of poison would definitely increase my versatility (and in general, help prevent me from getting stabbed in the face someday).

* * *

 **II. Poison - Shikaku**

I like to think that I make a lot of good decisions. Introducing a small child to the deadly world of shinobi probably wasn't one of them. Why, then, does it continue to pay off?

Yusei turned six recently, and he's more of an overachiever than ever.

Which is why it's such a surprise the first time I arrive at the office (just after ten, as typical) and my cute apprentice isn't already working hard at his desk. Like any responsible adult, I head over to the boy's apartment to investigate.

I'm not sure what I expected- maybe to catch my super-responsible apprentice sleeping in, proving that even he can slack off on occasion? But as Yusei answers the door, I'm forced to throw out whatever notions I've formed about teasing him. He's paler than usual, and his dark red hair (for once not covered by the bandanna-style forehead protector he favors) is matted with sweat. He speaks slowly, deliberately, as if the words take too much effort to form and push through his far-too-dry throat. "Sorry, sensei." He stops there, tripping over his thoughts, unable to force them into language.

"Yusei," I tell him, "You hardly need to apologize for getting a little sick. It happens to everyone. Do you need anything? Soup? Any books from the office?" I don't really know how to take care of a sick six-year-old, but I've heard soup's the thing to offer.

He turns it down, claiming that he's adequately prepared for this eventuality. No doubt he's more aware of his sickness and the proper ways to deal with it than I am. The library probably has books on that, after all.

About a week after that first incident, I begin to put the pieces together.

It starts when I realize that Yusei, who'd supposedly recovered from his apparently single day illness, exhibits some of the sluggishness I'd noticed at his apartment. I think nothing of it; it's entirely possible that the boy, in his eagerness to return to work, didn't rest up appropriately and is still dealing with whatever cold he's caught.

The next day, it's worse. Sweat saturates his bandanna, his shirt sticks to his body, his hands leave puddles on his desk. It's disgusting. And I can't avoid the fact that something's gone terribly wrong here.

"Yusei!" I stand in front of his desk, calling his name. But he's checked out, completely unresponsive. I snap my fingers in front of his wide-open eyes, but there's no reaction whatsoever.

"Nara-sama, he's been like that all morning." Yusei's desk-neighbor Ito informs me. "In fact, he's been a like this to a less severe degree all week."

"And you didn't think to say anything?" I ask in what I hope is a calm, rational, problem-solving voice. Ito's flinch tells I've failed. Whatever. I don't have time to worry about scaring the career chunin if we've got some assassin lurking around attacking my apprentice.

He stammers out, "W-well, Yusei said not to worry about it, and he-"

"WHAT." The word comes out of my throat as a snarl, somehow managing to convey both my anger and my confusion. It contains the memories of past violence and the promise of future violence to any who fail to provide a satisfactory answer. Ito timidly finishes his excuse, "-technically outranks me here, sir."

He wilts under my level stare, but doesn't have anything else to contribute. Across the bullpen, twenty-eight year-old chunin Morino Isamu speaks up. "I noticed he was...sweating a lot yesterday, sir. I asked him if he was okay, and he told me it was about what he expected. Sir, I...was under the impression that this was some kind of training exercise of yours."

Morino's usually such a confident guy, but he's clearly afraid now. Is he afraid of me, of what I'll do to him? Is he keeping something from me? Is someone forcing him to say this to me?

Doubtful. What's going on here?

 _I need to think this through. There_ Mentally, I take a step back from the situation. _Oh_ , I think, as the shadows of the various objects and people in the room suddenly shrink in magnitude. _I lost my temper completely. How did I miss that?_

What else have I missed? Details, details, details, details, details.

I turn my full attention once more to my apprentice. Lifting his right hand, I attempt to measure his pulse. Attempt, I say, because it fails. If it wasn't for the irregular, labored breathing, I might suspect that Yusei was dead at this point. Since he's obviously not, I tamp down my panic and lean across the desk to measure his pulse at the carotid artery. This time, I detect something.

Often when someone's heart pumps at less than full capacity, their pulse cannot be detected at the more peripheral arteries. One common cause for this is shock, but in conjunction with Yusei's other symptoms, I feel like we can safely rule that one out.

I count the beats out loud in the silent room.

"That's a minute," someone calls out. "Only fifty-three beats per minute," I'm thinking out loud now. "A typical resting heart rate for a six year old is closer to seventy-five. Some sort of paralytic agent, then? Or maybe a relaxant of some sort?"

Oh gods, I don't know how to deal with this. I'm so far out of my depth. How long has he been in this state? Is Yusei going to die? I probably should get him to the hospital, but is it safe to move him?

"Somebody, get a medic!" I call out, setting off a burst of movement as the gathered crowd begins to hustle.

"Belay that, Morino." Division head Utatane Koharu makes her entrance, coaxed out of her office by the growing hullabaloo in the bullpen. She looks critically over the crowd, then begins to dress us down.

"How is it," she asks, "that I've managed to gather the most incompetent shinobi in the village under one roof? Three jounin in this room alone, yet none of you can recognize the effects of the basic Konoha tetrodotoxin cocktail Blue Fern. And it's clear that none of the thirty adult ninja in my employ has ever undergone a standard poison immunization course. There was a time when every academy student was required to..."

As the boss lectures us on our incompetence and idiocy, I come to understand exactly what Yusei's been doing these past weeks. He's taken my throwaway suggestion about poisons all too seriously. This...situation: it's entirely my fault. I should have been more careful.

But still, for things to get so out of hand, surely there are measures in place to prevent exactly this scenario; some idiot genin bites off more than they can chew, ends up poisoning themselves to death. I assume that genin can't purchase poison-related supplies without the permission of their supervisors, how would Yusei- no, I'm being stupid. My apprentice has ANBU credentials, if he wants to buy something, no shopkeeper in the village would deny him.

Utatane winds up her rant on falling standards, how at least Yusei managed to escape the 'total shit peddled by the academy these days,' but if teaching him is left up to us idiots, that's almost as bad. "Well," she concludes, "at least Nidaime-sensei's books are still around. They won't lead you astray."

Which is fine, but doesn't really address the more pressing concern of my poisoned student. And while Utatane's reaction implies that there's no immediate danger here, I should definitely try to come off seeming more responsible. "So, boss?" I prompt her, "What should I do?"

"Nothing much. He's completely conscious right now, just unable to move. Oh, here's an idea: prop him up in the conference room. There's a seminar in an hour, and another this afternoon; if nothing else, he'll be able to watch."

Shaking her head one last time, she turns to leave. As she crosses the doorway into her office, the boss glances over her shoulder and addresses Yusei: "Child, your metabolism isn't fast enough for the full dosage steps. Those are written with teenagers in mind, so try scaling everything by two-thirds. And don't dehydrate yourself."

* * *

 **III: Promotion - Sarutobi**

As the assorted department heads gather their things and troop out of the conference room, Koharu makes her way up to me.

"Hiruzen," she says, "War is upon us. Homura and I have discussed-"

I interrupt her with a raised finger. "This is not the place." We adjourn to the the adjacent room, my office. Closing the door behind her and taking a seat, she starts again.

"War is a game for the youngsters, Hiruzen."

Ah, now I see where this is going. My former teammates think me too lax, no doubt with the backing of that war hawk Danzo. They don't think I have what it takes to win a third Shinobi war.

"And you want me to pick a successor?" There's no sense in beating around the bush like this. I'm older than Tobirama-sensei was when he died, but I've not been Hokage all that long. I'm at the peak of my game, and stepping down at this time would be a mistake- no, a disaster. My successor would have to fight a war of my construction, not understanding my decisions and long-term strategies. I make my opinion on the matter known: "Now is not the time."

"You misunderstand me," Koharu says with a chuckle. " _I_ am too old for war. Do not forget, Hiruzen, that Homura and I are several years your senior. One day, you'll wake up with the same realizations. You'll find yourself thinking as I do, and you'll know to step down."

Huh. I sit down and back off.

"What's brought this on? You've already retired from the field."

"I think it's time for me to hand over Tactical to the next generation. Some of the whiz kids we've got there, gods above, I can barely understand their jargon these days."

She slides a folder across my desk. "This is what I was thinking," she tells me, "promotion-wise."

It's no surprise that she names Nara Shikaku as her replacement. Koharu always did like him- she always said his unique insights, thirst for victory, and record of success more than made up for his unreliability, alcoholism, and other personal failings. I'm not so sure though, and I mention my doubts.

"Ah, but that's why I've selected a deputy to keep him in line. My student, Yoshino. A strong kunoichi-"

"Clanless?" I interject.

"Sure, clanless, but she's an accomplished jounin who won't take Nara's nonsense," defends Koharu. "And what she lacks in creativity, she makes up in consistency and reliability. Between the two of them, I feel that I'm leaving the division in good hands."

"I'll be honest, Koharu, I half expected you to set that apprentice of his as deputy. After the way my top jounin have been raving about him, and the results your division credits to him… I wouldn't have been surprised one bit."

"Ah, Yusei? Well, he worships his teacher a bit too much to be much of a restraining factor. Actually, he and Shikaku egg each other on in some fashion- they've got a similar sort of... exess, I suppose… to their actions. But look here, Hiruzen."

Pointing at a spot lower down the personnel page, she explains to me, "I do want him to get a little experience in a leadership role. He's done well as a trainee over the last year. I was thinking of promoting him to Shikaku's old role, as a team leader."

"Will a team actually listen to his orders?" I think I ask a valid question- there's no guarantee in my mind that a group of adults of various ages would accept the command of a child.

"On the battlefield, perhaps not. But there's no denying that the boy lives, eats, and breaths knowledge, and in our office that reigns supreme."

I can accept that. It's Koharu's world, not mine, and if she thinks this will work who am I to say otherwise. I take a moment to skim through the rest of the folder, just to make sure she's not trying to slip anything past me.

Ah, the obvious question. "And what do you plan to do with your time, Koharu? I can't see you sitting around in your retirement."

She answers only with a coy smirk and the line, "I'm sure something will come up."

Oh, I see. You'll be a professional interfering busybody.

* * *

 **IV: Tattoo - Yusei**

Fuuinjutsu etched into my very skin...sounds like a great idea, right? Only if you ignore the part where it hurts like a motherfucker.

After my promotion came through the pipes, sensei and I had a chat about what it means to be ANBU. "Rule number one: you can't tell people you're in ANBU. Even if they basically know, you can't confirm it.

"Rule number two: you obey the chain of command. That's the Hokage, then the ANBU general, then me, then whassername, my new deputy… Yoshino. And then you. It's a pretty short chain, which makes it all the more important.

"Rule number three: when you're summoned, you show up. When the general issues a summons, he can also use your ANBU tattoo to find you. This stuff wasn't too important when you were technically a trainee, but they're putting you in charge of a team now. Sure, it's a non-combatant team, but it's a team and it comes with responsibilities."

Sensei was a lot more serious than I'd ever seen him, but it makes sense in retrospect. After all, I'm not leading just any team. I'm leading the team Shikaku-sensei personally assembled over the span of several years.

It's nice to know that he's serious about taking care of his subordinates, even if it's a lot of responsibility on my shoulders

But that led us here, to now. To a masked man punching chakra-infused ink into my left shoulder with a brush made of steel needles.

And gods damn, it fucking hurts.

* * *

 **V: Science - Orochimaru**

I knock on the slightly ajar office door, then go ahead and push it open.

"Orochimaru! What a surprise," says Nara, in the least surprised tone imaginable. "What brings you to my neck of the woods?"

I pull out my not-so-contrived excuse. "I have the results on the analysis your division requested. It was a very different test you asked for this time, so I thought I'd follow up on it myself. I admit to some curiosity on how exactly this chakra residue density is going to help inform a tactical decision."

It's a legitimate question that I do want an answer to eventually, but today that chakra density test is just my ticket into Tactical Division's main office (heading off Nara's inevitable "doesn't Scientific have messengers or couriers?" argument for me to be anywhere else). My curiosity is almost completely focused on the person who requested that test- and a dozen other off-the-wall analyses over the last year and a half.

Nara grimaces (subtly, of course. If I was any lesser shinobi, I would have missed it), but decides not to run me out of his territory. "Yeah, I'd love to know that too. It was probably Yusei, as you undoubtedly guessed." Glancing at his clock, he goes on. "If he's not in the bullpen around now, check the seminar room. He's a big fan of the seminar room these days."

That's the best invitation I'm going to get, so I take the plunge.

The first thing I hear as I approach Tactical's seminar room is the sound of someone floundering through an explanation of probability, and then a much younger voice criticizing the first speaker."It sounds like you know it, Kotori, and it sounds like you understand the difference between the two approaches. So why do you insist on using frequentist statistics on every analysis you write? The premise of your argument is rejecting some null hypothesis, and your beloved frequentist statistics just doesn't give you that power."

"But, you said my results made sense. If we get to the same place, how does it matter?" asks the first voice.

"Understanding how you got the results is just as important as the results themselves. I won't lie and say that intuition has no role in tactical decision making, but I hope that everyone here understands that it's not as powerful a tool as the cold, hard math. If we mispredict something, we need to know why. We need to know if a poor tactical decision was the result of faulty intelligence, or if someone in our ranks is leaking our strategies to the enemies. We need to know how fast the other side learns from us, reacts to us, and we need to react to their reactions before they make them.

"Intuition alone won't get you all of that. Proper mathematical analysis will. An understanding of statistics and probability will. So you can't rely on the first and fudge the rest."

 _Well put, Yusei._

This kid is wasted in Tactical; why can't I have him in Scientific Division? I'd surround him with the brightest mathematical and scientific minds available and turn him loose on the world.

I catch him as he exits the seminar room; instead of following my instincts and trying to recruit him, I present the question I supposedly came here to ask.

His face lights up as I tell him about my conclusions on the chakra residue density situation and as I ask him why he wanted that information, Yusei asks me a question. "If I told you that the data was collected in walls of a mine located in disputed territory between Rain and Earth countries, could you guess what the residue density tells us?"

The motivation, combined with my knowledge of current events, makes it obvious. Damn it, I'm going to have to steal this child.

* * *

 **VI: Secrets - Inoichi**

We jounin are light sleepers, so the first quiet knock on my door wakes me. There isn't a second. A quick glance at my alarm clock tells me that it's too late for my visitor to be on any sort of clan business. Must be work related. Ugh.

I move silently to my door, blinking sleep out of my eyes and reaching out with my chakra senses.

 _Oh. Shikaku. How unexpected._

My first thought is that he must be drunk, to be calling at this hour. Opening the door to his serious face dispels that notion.

He invites himself in, sitting at my couch. He doesn't speak until I've closed the door and turned on a small lamp. I start to ask him for some explanation, but he signals ' _Secret. Get the windows'_ with his hands low.

Rolling my eyes at what's probably just melodrama, I shut my blinds and turn back to Shikaku.

"Well, Shika. What's going on?" I keep my voice low.

He responds in an even lower voice. "Do you remember what we discussed about a year and a half ago, at the training grounds?"

I rack my memories. "At the training ground? Oh! You mean Yusei's… situation."

"Exactly. I need a favor. Regarding that."

I trust Shikaku not to take advantage of our friendship. "Sure," I tell him. "I'm happy to help you and the kid."

"Great. I'm looking for something, and you have resources I don't have."

"You'll need to be more specific than that, Shika. What are you looking for?"

Shikaku tells me.

"That's impossible," I inform him. "Besides, shouldn't you be asking Chouza?"

"He doesn't know anything about it," rebuts Shikaku. "I'm not even sure he thinks it's real."

"Is it?"

"Is it real?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, its real. Ino, it's definitely real."

I don't bother asking him how he's so sure. I'm not sure I want to know, frankly.

"Does it-"

"Yeah. It's supposed to only use Yin."

"Shika, it sounds too good to be true."

"Most good things sound that way. We're turning into jaded old bastards."

"Fuck."

I think it over. I've always trusted Shikaku, at least when he's sober. A subtle sniff confirms to me that he is in fact sober now.

I just can't bring myself to doubt my oldest friend right now.

"How can I help?"

* * *

FAQ:

Dear thesecretsix, what is this? Well I had some ideas stuck in my head for little short paragraph stories that needed to be told, but they all ended up a little longer….Whoops.

Thanks for sticking with me through finals month...


	10. Ch 5 - Team

**Chapter 5: Team - Shikaku**

Being the boss would be amazing, if it wasn't for all the paperwork. Sneaking a glance at the clock, I reach for my desk's hidden compartment and the flask that resides within.

 _It's early afternoon, but just a sip might make the budget reports go so much quicker._

No, I tell myself. There's something that's actually important today, I can't drink yet… But what was it again? Am I supposed to meet with the Hokage? He'd smell it on my breath in a heartbeat.

Yoshino will know, surely. With the next step of my procrastination thusly planned, I organize the disparate papers on my desk and make my roundabout way to the office door. I open it just in time to come face-to-face with my deputy, her arm raised and ready to knock.

I recover smoothly. "Ah, Yoshino! I was just about to look for you." I meant to do that. Obviously. I'm a skilled jounin who can tell when his subordinates are waffling around outside his door.

"Sir, your new genin are here." She blurts at the same time, somewhat flustered.

Oh yeah, that. The team. How could I forget? Now that I know what game we're playing, some facts assert themselves in my memory.

"Right on time," I tell her, as if I had even the slightest idea that this was supposed to happen today. "I was hoping you could go through some of the paperwork this afternoon while I work with the new team."

Shit, I have I overreached? Yoshino frowns, but I can't tell if that's because she's on to me or if she just hates the idea of doing paperwork as much as I do. It's probably the latter, so I double down: "It'd be a shame if our budget wasn't approved because we miss the deadline."

No reaction. Go big or go home, Shikaku. Victory or death.

"Thanks, Yoshino. Yeah, it should all be sort of administrative stuff, but definitely keep me in the loop if there's anything important in the pile. Great!"

I sidestep my stupefied deputy and head over to Yusei's office. Banging on the door, I call out. "Grab your stuff, kid. It's time to make some friends."

"Uhh, what?" Whoops. Looks like nobody told him. In retrospect, it was probably my job to do that. No time for that now, though.

"Come on!"

Having thusly retrieved my apprentice, I start the search for my new students. It's an easy enough search, since I happen to know everyone who works for me (and I don't employ many teenagers). The purple-haired girl sticks out like a sore thumb, as does the Hyuuga child in his blands and beiges. At least the girl's dressed in ANBU blacks and greys though- not like that walking Hyuuga eyesore.

I beckon to them and step out onto the streets. Like cute little ducklings all in a line, the three genin follow me.

Yusei cuts to the front. "Sensei," he asks, "what's all this?"

"I've been told to take on a full genin squad," I tell him. "I chose the three of you. Well, I already had you, Yusei, and then-"

"Why would you have to take on a team though," he interrupts. I give him a moment to think it over- really, he should be able to figure this one out- and it clicks for him. "Oh, right. The war. We're militarizing. We did that thing- the report on this like a week or two ago, right? Increasing the number of chuunin a year and a half from now, at the Suna exams. Yeah.

"But why would they pick you? You're a department head already, sensei. You should be doing war stuff, not teaching and stuff."

His voice gets lower, to decrease the chances of his new teammates overhearing him. "And who are these guys? They look old. Like, old enough to already have teams." They heard him, judging by the Hyuuga's wince. Good, they're capable of eavesdropping. That's a basic and highly essential shinobi skill.

Hopefully these guys don't need to be taught _too_ much.

"That's what we're here to cover." We've arrived at our destination: public training ground six. "Welcome to team six, everyone. Come on, take a seat. Introduce yourselves. Let's go around the circle; give your name, age, skills, hopes and dreams, whatever. Right? Yeah."

A single cricket chirps somewhere in the distance.

How troublesome. I kick it off: "For example, I'm Nara Shikaku. I'm twenty-four, a jounin, and the head of Tactical division. I do shadows and stuff, and my dream is… hmmm… lets not go there. Nix the dreams thing, yeah? Yusei, you're up."

"Okay, yeah. I'm Yusei, I'm seven-and-a-quarter and obviously I'm a genin. I work at Tactical too- for the last two years- and I do fuuinjutsu and ranged support. And poison, but I'm still learning that. And math, I do a lot of math and books and stuff." He's less articulate than he usually is- must be worried about making a good impression on his peers. That's good, right? Half the point of this really is to socialize these kids, after all.

I point at the next child in the series.

"I am Hyuuga Hideo," he recites formally. "I am fourteen years old. I am attached to the cryptanalysis group, and I fight using the gentle fist. I look forward to working with you all."

Perhaps he has more to say, but I'll never find out. The purple-haired girl excitedly jumps to her feet, and points directly at me.

"Alright! My turn! My name is Anko, and I'm thirteen years old." My final student practically shouts her introduction. "I'm apprenticed to Orochimaru-sama and the Scientific division, have been for the last year. I can summon snakes and beat the shit out of people! My dream is to prove that a clanless kunoichi can be the best!"

A long moment of shared confusion follows Anko's introduction, as the rest of us try to adjust to the sudden exuberance.

Yusei breaks the silence. "Wait, you work for Scientific? That's so cool! What do you do there? What is Orochimaru studying now? Is he still working on..." Ah, he's fanboying out. I really should try to make sure he never interacts with Orochimaru again. Once was far too many times, frankly.

"Well, Orochimaru-sama says it's not worth teaching me science until he knows I can survive as a ninja," Anko sheepishly reveals, "So I don't _really_ work for Scientific. Yet."

"Right," I interject, before my team meeting becomes a gathering of the Orochimaru official fanclub. "Some facts for you all. As you now know, all three of you are apprenticed to different jounin with various non-field responsibilities. You'll continue to be that jounin's apprentice, but you will also be expected to attend team meetings, trainings, and the occasional mission. The goal here is to make sure you're well rounded Konoha shinobi- you'll get some exposure to the different aspects of shinobi life that you might not see… cloistered away in offices and laboratories with your teachers." Things like social skills, interaction with one's peers, or interaction with people who aren't mad scientists or cooky mathematicians turn out to be quite important to young shinobi and kunoichi in their more formative years.

Which of course leads us to the probably reason I'm the official team sensei rather than the legendary Orochimaru of the Sannin or even the numbers genius Yuuhi Hideki over at Crypto. Somehow, Sandaime-sama looked at the three of us and found me to be more responsible, more capable, or perhaps simply less eccentric than his other department heads. And so I'm now responsible for making sure these three prodigious apprentices don't enter the shinobi business as some antisocial puddle of ninja grey matter.

How completely terrifying.

"Everyone on the same page? Great! Let's play a game."

* * *

The game, at least at first sight, is a simple one. The three of them against me. If they land even a single hit, they win. If they can't win in an hour, they lose.

But even the simplest of games can have a complex outcome. My goal today is to push this new team into the crucible, a literal trial by combat, and see what I can forge with it. I'd like to see them argue, then come to terms with one another, come up with a reasonable strategy, and implement it somewhat passably. It doesn't matter if they win or lose; I win regardless.

Teamwork is the backbone of the Leaf, after all, and I just don't have months to waste on D-rank missions and petty squabbling. Get along, kids, or I'll kick your tiny asses until you do.

I give them a few minutes to pull off the standard scatter-hide-realize you can't win-look for your teammates-regroup routine that genin seem to do in these scenarios, then reach out with my senses. I miss them at first, but I quickly realize they've opted to put some distance between me and their first argument as an official team.

Honestly, it's a good move on their parts. These kids aren't naive enough to think that they're going to agree right off the bat, and they've saved me a few minutes of awkwardly standing around pretending I can't hear them.

But of course, it means they've taken their eyes off me, giving me the freedom to eavesdrop to my content. Hideo's Byakugan, if he's capable of using it effectively, should be able to spot me hidden among the trees as I approach. Using conventional stealth techniques here would be a good test of my team's situational awareness, but I've got bigger fish to fry.

After all, I want to see the team argue.

So as I approach the standard Byakugan range, I step _into_ the shadows and flit across the forest floor unseen. In conjunction with some basic chakra suppression, this technique lets me get close enough to slide smoothly into Yusei's own shadow- and since I know he doesn't have any advanced sensory skills, this really is the safest place for me.

They're already bickering quite nicely without my interference. I kick back and enjoy the show.

"I mean, it's not like I know what I'm talking about," Yusei sneers, sarcasm dripping off his every word. "I only studied under Shikaku-sensei for about two years."

Hideo has a problem with Yusei calling the shots, though. "I just don't think you're qualified to make these decisions for us, kid. How are you even out of the academy?"

"Boys," starts Anko, warning evident in her voice. Yusei and Hideo ignore her, continuing their bickering.

"Seriously, I'm more than twice your age. You are not the team leader here."

"Fuck you, Hyuuga. If you could find a few I.Q. points to rub together, maybe scare up a little spark of intelligence, you might even come up with an original insult or two. I mean, your plan was seriously just-"

"Shut the fuck up, both of you fucking idiots." Anko's done putting up with their shit though. "Now look, since you're both complete dumbasses, I'm the goddamned team leader right now."

 _Oh, and it looked like she was going to be such a sweet girl._ _Why do I always get the most vulgar children?_

"We're going to use some goddamned common sense here, okay? Hideo, you're good at codes and shit, right? When we need that, I'll definitely defer to your experience. But right now, we need a strategy and Yusei's the one who works in goddamned Tactical. I'm going to assume he can put together some tactics for us, you hear?"

"He is literally a child." says Hideo, just as Yusei mutters "I'm probably better at crypto than this jackass anyways." They glare at each other.

"And you're both going to get over your fucking egos or I'm actually going to kill. You. Both."

"Let us say we listen to you, Anko. I bring the codes, he brings the strategy. What do you bring to the table, oh glorious team leader?"

"I bring the goddamned snake summons that I'm actually going to feed you to if you don't shut up, stop measuring your goddamned dicks- my snake's bigger than both yours combined- and try to actually win this fight." Ah, the telltale signs of Orochimaru's teaching make themselves evident.

"Oh, I get it," quips Yusei. "Hideo, she brings the ruthless pragmatism. And apparently snakes. Sorry, penises."

"...motherfucker."

"I'm a seven year old orphan, Anko. I have neither a mother to fuck, nor am I physically capable of actually fucking anything. Try to make your insults at least slightly relevant."

Hideo makes a point of glancing upwards briefly, then looks annoyed when nobody reacts to whatever he thinks he's done. "I want you to know that I'm rolling my eyes at you."

"Oh. No pupils. Why would you even do that? It's completely pointless."

"Yeah, that's fuckin' weird."

"I want you to know that I hate you both."

Anko claps her hands together, apparently pleased. "Great! Now we're all on the same page."

"Whatever. Here's the plan: sensei will-" Yusei somehow transitions smoothly from crass and bratty to lecture-hall briefing mode. "...so be in position, and then-"

I don't let him finish. Sure, the team have accomplished goals one and two- argue and make up- without much hassle but that doesn't mean I need to make the rest too easy. Or at all, really.

I leap out of Yusei's shadow and target all three children with a sweeping low kick. Surprisingly, I connect only with Anko leg, knocking her to the ground. As I sidestep a brace of Yusei's senbon and duck under Hideo's jyuuken strike, Anko scrambles to her feet.

"Scatter!" calls my apprentice as he lobs a kunai at my feet. Ah, explosive tags. That's one way to disengage from an unwanted encounter. I substitute myself with a broken branch just outside the blast radius, cleanly dodging the explosion, and scan the treeline. The kids have scarpered. Heh, that's alright. None of these genin can hide their tracks adequately- I make a note to teach them sometime soon- so following will be a breeze.

"Your time's half up," I call out to them. Nothing like the reminder of a clock to put a little pressure on.

This'll be fun.

* * *

FAQ:

Dear thesecretsix, what's up? Ugh, quals. Everything is tests. Also, have you heard of RWBY?


	11. Interlude 5 - Storytelling

**Interlude 5 - Storytelling**

 **I: Names, part I - Yusei**

After another grueling team-training session with Shikaku-sensei, Anko and I grab some lunch. Hideo's invited, of course, but he's got some task to take care of for his other teacher today.

We go to the dango stand, just like the last eight times it's been Anko's turn to choose. There's something different about this outing, though- it's the first time I've spent any time alone with the sole female member of my new team.

Let me amend that statement; I should describe her with an adjective more apropos to the nature of our conversation. It's the first time I've spent any time with the only other clanless orphan on my team.

I never defined myself by that term, not before now. I have the memory of growing up with parents, nine-eighths of a lifetime ago, but it's so hard to identify with that _information in my brain_. There's something about Anko and our shared experiences, though, that forces me to confront that problem.

"I want to make a name for myself, you know?" She says it with a smile, as though she's not baring her soul to me. "Like, a real name that I can pass to my family. Something that could one day be a full clan. Something that could be _proof_ that I mattered."

She goes on, "Not some title, not some epithet- Maniac Anko, that's just gross. Anko of the Seven Serpents? Prettier, but… it's not the right thing."

"What would you call yourself?" I ask, legitimately curious. I've never thought about naming myself. I remember having a surname once, in that other life, but it's distant now. Out of reach. That name isn't _mine_. Still, I haven't felt the need to have a new one.

"I dunno. Something awesome." She considers the dango in her hand, almost lovingly. "Maybe Mitarashi. Yeah, Mitarashi Anko. That's got a nice ring to it."

"Couldn't you get a family name by marrying into a clan?" It would be a lot easier than chartering a new clan, at least in this village. Konoha was founded on clans, and takes her old families (and their associated privileges) very seriously.

Anko chews her dango contemplatively. "But that name wouldn't be _mine._ "

* * *

 **II: Legends - Orochimaru**

"You're out of your mind, sensei." I'm sure if I can resolve the words he's just said with my image of the man, developed over so many years, as a strong and rational leader. "If you think that's a good idea, perhaps you're getting too old for your hat."

Sarutobi-sensei only frowns at me. "I didn't bring you here to insult me, Orochimaru." He sighs a long, heavy sigh. "Besides... I have one last war in me. It's what we need, I assure you."

"With who?" I won't deny that we need a good conflict right now, it's been about fifteen years of relative peace and it's crushing the village's economy. Given the success of the Second Shinobi World War, solving the similar recession in the wake of the First War, it makes sense that the Sandaime would look towards a prolonged conflict as a solution.

But we stand in a very different place than we did twenty years ago, when Sarutobi engineered that conflict that consumed the ninja world. Konoha had everything going for her then; we were the largest village, we had the most S-rank shinobi, we had the rising stars with the potential to become household names. The God of Shinobi, The White Fang, Dai the Crusher, even us, the legendary Sannin- we all paid for our epithets with the blood shed in those horrible five years. The enemy's blood spilled by our hands, yes, but also the blood of our students and our friends, our families and our lovers.

It was costly enough, but we came out on top in the end. Alas, it seems to have bought us only fifteen years.

As I run through the numbers in my head, I struggle to find a way to make things add up in a way that I can use to justify another war. I'm not sure we have the resources for anything big enough to matter.

But maybe something small will still help, hence my question. Kiri's in a rough place, the latest intel suggests the current Nidaime Mizukage's on his last legs and four of the seven swords are held by A-ranked or weaker shinobi. Suna might be struggling soon enough as well, if the drought occurs as my studies into weather forecasting have predicted.

I suspect our ability to win a war hinges entirely on picking an appropriate target.

"Take a look for yourself." Sarutobi-sensei slides a light green folder, bulging with documents, across his desk. "As you'll see, I'm not taking this matter lightly. This isn't a discussion in the abstract; the cogs have already begun to turn."

I begin to leaf through the pages, idly at first, but as I realize what this folder contains I'm forced to consider each document with the utmost of care. It's not the detailed analysis on the state of some single village or country that I had expected, not at all. It begins that way, though, and then it extends to every country in the Elemental Nations. The analyses are followed by a complicated ladder of skirmishes between minor nations, plans for political and economic dealings, specific black-ops missions to be undertaken on a particular timetable (players to be assassinated, elections to be rigged, farms to be torched)- what I'm reading is a recipe for a truly universal war.

And a plan for Konoha to come out on top, penned by our very own grandmaster.

Too bad Shikaku's wrong.

"This will never work," I inform sensei, who's sat quietly- smoking his pipe- and watched me read for the last twenty minutes. "Your plans rely on Jiraiya and Tsunade returning to fight in your war. If you don't have all three Sannin leading your charge, you can't expect Ame or Kumo to follow us into battle."

He cuts me off, saying harshly, "Jiraiya will come when I call him." He's not wrong, not about that at least. As much as he's chosen to shirk his responsibilities of late, Jiraiya's always known where his loyalties lie. Even though he's barely set foot in the village in the last ten years, Jiraiya still manages to fulfill his duties as a jounin of Konoha. His apprentice is proof enough that he takes his duties seriously, as is his wide-spanning spy network. But can we count on him to come home? That question is still up in the air- even when Jiraiya took on Minato as his sole student, he took the boy on a training journey rather than settling down within the walls of the Leaf- and it's anyone's guess.

Tsunade, on the other hand… My remaining lifespan wouldn't be enough time for me to list the reasons Tsunade would never return to fight even one battle in Sarutobi-sensei's name. I move instead to my other criticisms of the sensei's grand machination. "And I don't understand why you think Suna would form an alliance with us under any circumstance, after how we treated them in the Second War."

The face he makes in response is one of my least favorite expressions (when I see it on other people, at least): the superior smirk of one who possesses some secret knowledge. "You'll find that under Supplementary Materials, section nineteen."

"Supplementary Materials?" No such thing was included in what I read.

"Ah, my mistake." Sensei unlocks a drawer in his desk, withdrawing a second folder as stuffed as the first. "In some ways, this one is far more critical than the first."

I flip through it quickly, catching passing glimpses of the various section titles as I look for the the nineteenth. A few stand out: _Psychological Analysis of S2, S1, A3, A2, A1-rank Konoha Jounin; Political Factions in Earth Country Military following the Battle of Rider Field; On the Manipulation of Grain Prices; Complete History of Conflict between Marsh Country and Demon Country; Game Theory in the Context of Shinobi Alliances._ Sarutobi really put his team of experts to work producing this. I locate the recommended section, making a note to return to some of the more interesting topics that I'd skipped.

It's titled, amusingly enough, _Deconstructing a History of Enmity: Konoha/Suna relations for the Modern Era._ As I begin to read it, I recognize the handwriting (and the dry, always sarcastic, overanalytical tone) immediately- gods know I've seen it enough on the weirder requests sent to my division.

Following the tedious discussion of Suna's various grievances against the Leaf, the author outlines their twelve point plan to mend our bridges. It begins with the relocation of a middle-to-upper class merchant family from the Land of Fire to Wind country. This sets the stage for our future actions, which rely on the Wind Daimyo's reactions to the sudden onset of scarcity- declining food stockpiles, receding rivers, a decrease in average rainfall by ten-to-fifteen centimeters each year. (I follow the footnote here, which only refers me to some notes on differential geography and yearly climate data. Somehow tactical- no, that child- has managed to outperform one of my own personal projects. His mathematical model has apparently predicted the same drought I've anticipated, but somehow he's obtained enough precision to have the confidence to base major political decisions on it. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm going to have to steal this child. He's wasted outside of Scientific. Teaching a mind like his to play such games with human life- that's a good way to watch the world burn.) Here the recipe branches, providing different prescriptions for the different rational choices the Daimyo could make. Summarized, they more-or-less boil down to the following idea: build a culture of goodwill towards Fire Country and Konoha by feeding the masses at subsidized prices. From there, we begin to jointly host (read: pay for) the next annual chuunin exams, at which a Konoha genin will graciously surrender to a Suna genin in the finals, thereby cementing the goodwill between nations for years to come.

There are a few points after that, but, they're all minor notes on the types of treaties and agreements that will be necessary to translate this goodwill into meaningful military support during what's sure to be the Third Shinobi World War.

It's heady stuff.

"You said the plan has already begun to be implemented? Where are we on this?"

"On the Suna plans? We've already opened negotiations on the subject of the joint chuunin exams."

"So this _is_ going to happen, then?" I don't like it much, now that I know this is something more than an intellectual exercise. War is hell, as every sane man who's lived through it knows.

"Yes," replies sensei. "It is, after all, exactly what we need."

"And what happens when Tsunade refuses to heed your call?"

"I do have plans for that eventuality as well. You see, Inoichi and Shikaku expressed a very similar doubt in her."

Of course they did, they're smart, pragmatic men. Shikaku's not the man to pin all his hopes on reckless optimism, and if I know anything about Inoichi at all, there's an entire chapter in that _Psychological Analysis_ section devoted to convincing the Sandaime that neither Jiraiya nor Tsunade should be considered reliable here and now.

But sensei goes on, "Orochimaru, you think you know so much, but you still have much to learn about people. Our legends will come home. New legends will be born. This war will be… perfect. Konoha will re-assert herself as the dominant power in this world, and a beautiful future will follow."

I continue the sentence in my head, not willing to give it voice. _This war will be horrible, this war will destroy us. Not as a nation, not as a power, but as people._

How can he say that such a horrible thing will give life to something beautiful? I'll give Sarutobi the credit he's due- the bloodbath to come is exactly what Konoha requires to prosper- but I draw the line at calling it beautiful.

But I haven't been his student for thirty years without learning the way this man thinks.

That which I would call perfect can never truly be beautiful, not to him. Beauty, he would say, comes from the flaws, the cracks, the blemishes. So Sarutobi-sensei takes an object of relative perfection and twists its, prods it, perverts it until a small crack is made in its surface. Through suffering, strength; through strength, perseverance; through perseverance, beauty.

 _It disgusts me_.

But that's never enough for you, is it, sensei? So you push it harder and harder, you watch that crack grow. You laud and praise the continued survival under these conditions, you talk about how the beauty only increases.

The prettiest of flowers, you say, bloom only after the harshest winters. So you push and push and now you've pushed too hard. We buckle under the pressure, and you say we were never truly beautiful anyways. You move on to the next one.

 _That's what you do to us. You say I don't understand people, sensei, but I understand what you do to us._

 _We're all on that road now, even those of us who don't know it yet._

Sometimes, sensei, the object doesn't buckle. It stays strong, it struggles to keep its integrity, but by god it stays strong. The crack grows, but we don't give, we don't yield. Oh, you say, how beautiful. How superior, this one is, compared to the that buckled under the strain. But sensei, everything has its breaking point.

Eventually the crack spawns new cracks, small hairline cracks that spiderweb across our surfaces. Small hairline cracks that are the only indication that deep within, something is fundamentally broken. Eventually, it shatters completely, and you're left holding nothing.

What then?

You praise the beauty it once held, you tell others about its virtue and successes. You sing songs of its strength, and tell those you see as weak to model themselves in its image.

You're left with just a legend, sensei.

But a legend is just words, it's just a story. It can't fight in your wars, it can't feed your children.

It gives you the memory of what you lost, but a legend is no replacement for the original.

You can have your legends, Sarutobi-sensei, but before that, you had students.

Before the Legendary Three, you had Tsunade, Jiraiya, and Orochimaru. Do you even remember them?

* * *

 **III: Names, part II - Yusei**

It's funny how little thought I've given to such a defining thing. After all, that's the point of a name, isn't it? To define you.

I don't really know what the correct way to write my name. I'd never seen it written down before the first time I wrote it myself. Shikaku-sensei asked me one day, when he took me out of the orphanage. He was filling out the entrance forms for the academy, and obviously he needed by name.

I didn't know how to read or write the local language back then; I hadn't the opportunity to teach myself either of those skills at that time. Sensei taught me in about twenty minutes, and then he listed off the different ways of writing my name.

Yusei.

There were so many options, I didn't know how to choose one.

I asked him why he wrote his own name the way he does, but he only told me his father chose it. He mentioned the Nara traditions, their connection to their deer, and how that informed his father's choice. It didn't help me very much.

Hell, I don't even know who picked out my name. Was it my parents, or was it the matron at the orphanage. Did they find me as some unnamed child, abandoned somewhere? Or was I left on the doorstep, with a tidy note informing the matron who I was.

I wish I knew.

If the matron chose my name, it's probably meant to be written as 'help.' Someone probably found some scrawny-ass baby in a basket somewhere and decided it would need some help.

Or maybe someone said, "This child, he's going to grow up into a person that will help others." They'd have named me prescriptively, after a virtue I should embody.

That's not the story I want my name to tell, though. And if that's a choice I get to make, well, I'll tell my own fucking story.

I like to think that my mother named me.

And I like to think she'd have written Yusei as 'planetary.'

Because I'm actually _out of this goddamned world._

* * *

 **Notes:**

Something lighthearted at the end, because rereading Orochimaru's rant (monologue? introspection?) made me sad. A bunch of what I've written recently is a bit sad, but I think that's alright because then it's out there instead of just inside me.

The fun thing about multiple perspectives is that people see themselves differently than others do. Sarutobi sees himself as a kindly old grandfather who has to make hard decisions for the good of his people. Orochimaru sees him as a ruthless warhawk who uses people until they break. Etc. You've probably already seen some of me trying this kind of thing from the differences in how Shikaku and Yusei talk about to each other depending on who's narrating.

I'm working on an Anko chapter next. Writing from Anko's POV freaks me out a bit, because it's so far from my natural voice that it's weird to read aloud. I've been doing a little bit of work with different voices, though, in my RWBY oneshot series. So far I've done some characters that I can still identify with, a bit, but I've gone for a different approach towards writing them. Stark White, for example, is very stream of consciousness-y (don't worry though, I'm not going to suddenly switch to second-person narration in Iome). My proper voice, I think, is somewhere between Orochimaru, Yusei, Shikaku, and the way I wrote Summer. Closest to Yusei, of course, but he's still got some growing up to do.

Also, I don't actually know _any_ Japanese. I chose Yusei's name's meaning based on my own actual name. Don't be mad if my understanding of how Japanese names work is way off-base. Thanks in advance.

And thanks for continuing to read and review _I opened my eyes._ It continues to surprise me when people tell me they like my writing. Thanks.


	12. Ch 6 - A Day in the Life of

**Chapter 6: A day in the life of - Anko**

"Ready?" Shikaku-sensei looks back and forth between me and Hideo. "Begin."

For a few seconds, we're both completely still. I glance away from my opponent, just for an instant, giving him the opportunity to surge forward to exploit the hole he spots in my defense.

Except there's no opening, not really. I've baited him into overcommitting on the first exchange of blows. I leisurely sidestep his shoulder-level jyuuken strike and let Hideo's momentum carry him directly into the punch I've aimed at his gut. The force of the blow actually lifts him up off his feet, just for an instant, and then he hits the ground hard.

"Ouch," deadpans our teacher. I'm actually pretty impressed at Hideo for holding on to his stoic routine for as long as he has. That looked like it really hurt.

"Do you know what your mistake was?" I ask him. I thought he'd been getting better at these spars- he lasted almost a minute the other day- but after casually knocking him on his back in about three seconds today I'm beginning to have my doubts.

It's clear that he doesn't know what he's done wrong. "Uhh, maybe my stance was too open?"

"Hardly," interjects Yusei, who's just sitting on the sidelines spectating. "That's only a valid excuse if you're defending. Try again." It's actually pretty funny, the pipsqueak knows all the words and concepts but still manages to be completely hopeless at Taijutsu. To be fair, he has the handicap of being a fifty-pound seven-year-old that I can pick up and throw around with one hand.

Hideo's still lost, though, so I help him out: "You overcommitted. I knew that you'd throw an all-out attack at me if you thought you could hit me, so I pretended to have a weakness."

"I didn't overcommit, that was a textbook perfect jyuuken strike."

"I don't care how textbook it was, that was bad." The Hyuuga looks like he wants to argue that point, so I remind him ever so gently, "That pain in your… everything? I think that's the proof behind my argument. It was a bad strike."

He picks himself up and dusts himself off. "I want to try again."

Sensei steps up again. "Sure, ready?" There's no protest. "Begin."

I refrain from using that same 'baiting' trick, no matter how tempting it is. After all, there's a chance Hideo might actually start catching on if I repeat it too often. I have to remind myself that he's actually a pretty smart guy, maybe actually more intelligent than me if we just count the IQ points- being around genius-types all day everyday means I set the bar pretty high, what with Orochimaru-sama, Shikaku-sensei, and even little Yusei. It's easy to forget that Hideo's some sort of mathematical whizz kid too.

So this time, I actually put the taijutsu Orochimaru-sama taught me to work.

I hesitate to call it a style; it's more of a deconstruction of all other styles. Orochimaru-sama, over the course of his career, has observed, dissected, and analysed over four-hundred different taijutsu styles. He found that he could reduce them into about seventy unique style families, and theorized that if one could find a counter all the moves in these seventy categories, one could completely counter any taijutsu user they encountered.

Of course, the resulting Taijutsu methodology is almost impossible for the average shinobi to utilize well; it contains hundreds (verging on thousands) of moves, all of which are to be used in response to particular classes of attack or defence from one's opponent, and relies on being able to recognize the stylistic underpinnings of one's enemy's techniques, correctly classify them, and respond accordingly. "Hand-to-hand combat for the thinking shinobi," he called it, an elevation of (what he considers to be) the most inane jutsu category to something befitting his genius.

Because, really, Orochimaru-sama hates fighting with taijutsu. He loves his sword- the legendary Kusanagi- and his vast library of ninjutsu a little too much to dirty his hands by throwing a punch.

Unfortunately, he doesn't let his preferences get in the way of building me up to be a well rounded kunoichi. (A master of every field, of course, being Orochimaru-sama's definition of 'well-rounded')

And while I recognize that I'm not in that same category of unbounded intellect, I suspect that I'm above average at the very least. Why else would Orochimaru-sama have chosen me as an apprentice? As long as he believes in my ability to accomplish these lofty tasks, so will I.

Hideo's shifting body weight snaps me away from my thoughts, back into the present. He comes at me more carefully this time, thinking about his strikes and the opening he leaves when he attacks. It's nothing to worry about, though, because the weakness I proceed to exploit aren't his own mistakes: they're fundamentally part of the Hyuuga Jyuuken.

A strong focus on using the hands to attack means that the feet are left as an afterthought, used only for positioning. A sweeping kick disrupts Hideo's forward progress.

When every hit requires careful targeting- if he can't hit my tenketsu, his strike is essentially wasted- adjusting my body positioning by fractions of an inch can render an entire assault null.

An over-reliance on whipping one's arms forward from the shoulder means that the user is left vulnerable to a disruption of balance. It also telegraphs his every strike. Finally, it's slow: it gives me the time to step inside his range and quickly punch him in the shoulder. That causes a small adjustment in his posture, and he loses his footing trying to compensate.

This is the opening I need, and I use the second component emphasized by Orochimaru-sama's taijutsu: brutal and efficient strikes at all unguarded vital points. One elbow in the solar plexus, a follow-up chop to the neck, and Hideo goes down like a rock.

In all, I've taken only four actions to dismantle his entire combat style. I've expended minimal effort, and once again, Hideo is left sprawled out on his back panting. I could literally do this all day. (In fact, Orochimaru-sama makes me do this all day on a regular basis. "It's the only way for your body to learn the motions, Anko-chan.")

It's beautiful, in a macabre way.

"I don't get it," he says, looking up at me. "I don't think you tricked me anywhere that time, and I was really careful not to overcommit. But somehow, you were just a step ahead of me. We're about the same size, the same speed, on a pretty equal footing, right? I just don't get how you can outclass me so thoroughly."

I suppose it's my duty to tell my teammate what he's doing wrong. "I'm thinking, you're only reciting." That's really the only answer I can give him without sitting down and breaking down every opening in the style he's been taught.

Unfortunately my answer isn't enough. Hideo still looks confused. Shikaku-sensei comes in with a clearer explanation.

"You're spitting out the katas you've memorized, banking on the idea that someone two hundred years ago really did stumble onto the single best way to fight." He offers a lackadaisical shrug, "That's a fundamentally flawed method. Now, don't get me wrong here, Hideo, I'm not attacking you or your family when I say that."

Our teacher ponders for a second, then continues. "Alright, I know. I'm giving you a bit of homework. Sometime in the next week, try to observe some of the active jounin- maybe some of the senior chuunin- from your clan spar against people using different styles. Make sure to compare their actual motions to what you know the exact steps of the jyuuken are. Spot the divergences, see how they react."

That's a pretty good step, I think. I'm all in favor of helping Hideo get better at Taijutsu, especially since that'll mean I don't have to spar against the third member of our team. Obviously, close-combat matches with him are completely pointless- even Hideo could crush Yusei in a straight Taijutsu match- so we don't ever do those. Instead, sensei only makes Yusei participate in the no-holds-barred spars, with all weapons and tools allowed.

And of course, that means a spar with Yusei turns into a half hour of desperately avoiding arrows, needles, explosions, clouds of various poison gases, and increasingly ludicrous fuuinjutsu traps. While I can still come out ahead about half of the time, the whole process is infuriating and taking even one glancing blow from him means I might get to spend the next half hour paralyzed, vomiting, or otherwise disabled.

Which is absolutely nobody's idea of fun.

* * *

I'm still thinking of potential solutions to the newly labeled 'Yusei-sparring' problem during my afternoon training with Orochimaru-sama. Since I spent the morning working with taijutsu, we focus primarily on my ninjutsu and summoning.

I'm fortunate to have been born with an affinity towards earth release, as that element synergises well with the Snake contract. However, as Orochimaru-sama says, it doesn't excuse me from also mastering the standard arsenal of fire techniques that every Konoha-nin should know.

Orochimaru-sama is picky that way; he doesn't believe in settling for 'good enough;' mastery is the only option. It's daunting, but as long as he thinks I can do it, I'll do my best.

As he discusses the different species of venomous serpents he wants me to work with today, an idea strikes me. "Orochimaru-sama, actually I had a question."

"Go ahead, Anko-chan." He's always supportive when it comes to what he deems as good questions.

"Well, eventually I need to become immune to all these venoms, right? I mean, how can I rely on them if they hurt me just as much? I was wondering if we could actually start with that instead."

He furrows his brow. "What's this really about, Anko-chan? You've never been averse to working with snakes before; is it possible that you are iophobic?" It must be obvious that I don't know that word, because he explains. "The irrational fear of poisoning."

"Oh! No, Orochimaru-sama. Nothing like that. It's just that my teammate uses a lot of poisons when we spar, and it's becoming really… infuriating…"

He smiles at at me. I wonder if it's because he's glad that I'm not afraid of snakes after all, or because he sees something of himself in my dissatisfaction with second place.

I'd be happy with either.

"Of course," he says. "We should be able to start on that in the next few weeks, then. But don't think this excuses you from your summoning, do you understand?"

"Yes, Orochimaru-sama. Um, why can't we start sooner, if you don't mind me asking."

"Has he not informed you? Your team leader requested that I give you the next week off, I suspect he's taking you on your first proper mission."

* * *

I realize I need the particular dates for our mission so that I can plan around it. Someone needs to water my plants, after all. The only thing for it is to seek out Shikaku-sensei, so I drop by Tactical on my way home.

The last time I was here, I wasn't allowed in further than the lobby. I guess now I'm known as one of Shikaku's students, because nobody stops me from entering. Unfortunately, my teacher doesn't seem to be in right now. I ask one of the chuunin-vested men sitting in the central area of the office-space if they know where he might be, or if maybe he's gone home for the day. They shrug, telling me only that "nobody can predict the whims of Nara-buchō," and referring me instead towards my teammate's office.

Also, why the fuck does Yusei have an office?

I want an office.

The door they point at is already cracked open, so I let myself in. The first thing I notice about the office is how nice it is. The room itself is rectangular and and possess no windows, but the various furniture is arranged in such a way that it doesn't feel claustrophobic. It's large enough that the space is divided up into two areas: on one side, there's a desk (at which sits my miniscule teammate) and some filing cabinets, on the other a small guest area with a table, some chairs, and a small couch. A massive blackboard, covered in various scribblings and mathematics, spans one of the long walls. Two of the remaining three walls are dominated by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, packed to bursting with binders, notebooks, and hardcover tomes. The last wall, directly above Yusei's desk, has only a single claim to attention: a large map of the elemental nations, covered in pins and colored strings.

Yusei looks up from his work as I enter. "Hey, Anko. What's up?"

"I was just looking for Shikaku-sensei. Orochimaru-sama said we had a mission next week or something, and that was the first I heard of it." I explain. "Actually, did he mention it to you?"

Yusei points at a corner of his blackboard, which has a few dates and is heavily boxed in. "Yeah, he sort of sprung it on me after lunch today, and now I have to find someone to take over my team's leadership for a few days." He sighs, a strange little sound from such a young boy. "Which wouldn't be a problem if _**all these grown-ass men**_ weren't terrified of Yoshino-san."

("Sorry," someone at one of the desks outside calls back.)

"Actually," he continues, "it's perfect that you're here. Maybe you can answer some of the questions I have about packing properly for this kind of a mission. Presumably they cover it at some point in the Academy, but I couldn't find anything useful in any of the texts."

"Yeah, they just kind of explain it." I'd forgotten that he hadn't really completed the academy, but in retrospect it seems obvious given his age.

"Great, let's walk and talk. I was doing this at home, you know?"

We make small talk as we navigate the busy rush-hour streets. Yusei asks me how my afternoon went, and seems astounded when he learns that my typical daily schedule consists of team training in the morning, individual training in the afternoon, and self-study as assigned by Orochimaru-sama in the evening. When I ask him what it is he does when we're not at team trainings, he chuckles and explains to me how most of his time goes into his actual job.

"Your actual job, though, is being a shinobi." I point out.

He shrugs. "Not as much as you'd think. I mostly read and analyze intelligence reports, manage my team (as they do that same thing), and work on developing more mathematical techniques and models for this stuff. I probably only work on learning real combat stuff for maybe a few hours a week, outside of the team stuff."

"And when I go home," he goes on, "I almost always focus on fuuinjutsu."

"I guess that counts as training too."

"I wouldn't really," he shrugs again. "I'm working on the cool stuff these days, not like combat explosions. I've been working on a first-principles reconstruction…" Whatever Yusei's trying to communicate to me becomes quickly lost in jargon. Still, I let him continue; the few months that I've known him has been long enough to learn how pissy he gets if someone interrupts him when he's this into something.

I take the opportunity to reflect on how similar different Orochimaru-sama and Shikaku-sensei really are. Shikaku-sensei always comes to the training field with some sort of conceptual, almost moral, lesson. He emphasizes understanding and strategy over training and pure effort. It's a strategy that probably worked for him, considering what I know of the typical Nara fighting style. _Outthink the enemy, and let them trap themselves in their own ignorance._

It's not that Orochimaru-sama doesn't believe in the importance of understanding and strategy, though- hell, those are the two of the three holy pillars of his entire combat style- it's just that he doesn't place intellect alone on a pedestal like Shikaku-sensei. Orochimaru-sama emphasizes honing each skill to mastery, and every lesson focuses on one concrete skill. The concepts, he leaves to me to learn from the books, bringing my questions to him afterwards.

Both of these teaching philosophies likely have their merits- one need only to look at the successes of their practitioners to draw that conclusion. Both of my teachers are notable jounin, heads of their respective departments, and at least somewhat renown as the best in their fields. But is one way of thinking better than the other? Orochimaru-sama _is_ considered to be the single most powerful shinobi of his generation, and possesses the lofty epithet of _legendary_.

I give voice to these thoughts as Yusei unlocks his apartment door (and concludes his fuuinjutsu theory rampage).

"Huh," he responds. "Not to badmouth him or anything, I mean I met him once and he seemed hella cool and he does great work, but it's almost as if Orochimaru wants to make you a mini-him. If that makes sense?"

And it does, it makes perfect sense. But I'd always considered that to be obvious, the natural conclusion of a successful apprenticeship, and it takes Yusei's awkward language for me to consider that it might not always be.

A good example of this would be Yusei himself. To borrow some words, _it's almost as if Shikaku-sensei doesn't want to make Yusei a mini-him_. And that's kind of weird to me.

But now the idea has been put into words, it seems pretty obvious. Shikaku-sensei gives Yusei a lot of intellectual freedom, doesn't seem to shape Yusei's combat methods towards his own preferred style, and encourages Yusei to specialize in a niche field outside of his own knowledge.

I don't know what to make of it, other than that it's interesting.

* * *

Seeing Yusei's office really should have prepared you for the state of his living quarters.

The whole situation is, quite frankly, absurd.

He actually lives in a space smaller than his office. And somehow, he's crammed twice or thrice the number of books into it. In terms of raw volume, I'd estimate there to be more paper than air in the room.

At least in the office, the books had been well organized and confined to the bookshelves. Here, they're stacked randomly about the room, in piles taller than I am. The boy, with his smaller frame, steps easily between the closely packed stacks but I hesitate to enter the room.

Gods forbid I knock one of these over, the whole room would go down.

Wondering why I haven't followed, Yusei looks over his shoulder at me. "Oh!" he exclaims. "Sorry about this. Most of it's library stuff I need to return this weekend, before we leave." He slides some of the piles aside, clearing a path to the low table, itself piled high with assorted shinobi equipment.

I look at the sheer amount of stuff he wants to bring for this mission. "First of all, we're only going to be gone for three days. You probably don't need… this much of… well, any of it."

"So what I'm really worried about is forgetting something important," he explains. "I can always decide not to take something, but if I don't remember I need it then I'll be totally fucked."

I guess that's reasonable enough. "Well," I say, "we can run through the standard checklist, just to make sure. But I think you've pretty much got everything."

We do that for a bit. I've got my checklist more or less drummed into my head by Orochimaru-sama, who would never excuse a lack of such basic knowledge on my part, so we just step through and make sure Yusei's not forgotten something vital.

As I suspected, he hasn't. However, this might be a side effect of Yusei packing everything (that isn't a book) that he owns rather than any great foresight on his part.

"Alright, now to start eliminating things." I say, and Yusei frowns.

"Nah, that's okay. I'll just take it all."

I laugh. "You're going to carry all of this stuff," and here I point particularly to the beat-up kettle on table that simply no business going on a mission, "to wherever the hell we're going? It might be a day and a half of running with your pack, you realize. It'll be heavy, seriously."

He only smirks at me, "Maybe for you plebeians without the ability to casually create self-sustaining spacetime loops." For a long moment, I have no idea what he's referring to, but then it hits me like a brick.

Fucking fuuinjutsu, fucking storage seals, and fucking elitist pricks that can't call things by their conventional names.

* * *

I advance cautiously, making sure to pay special attention to the shadows. From the other side, Hideo attempts to flank sensei. If all's proceeding as planned, Yusei should be somewhere in the trees lining up his shot.

We're playing a version of the same game Shikaku-sensei presented to us on that first day of team six. The major difference, this time, is that we've been able to strategize in advance. Oh, and now we're familiar with each other's fighting styles and decision-making processes. That one's important too.

In short, though, this time we're actually a team.

Not that it's helping. Somehow, with all of our coordination, we still haven't been able to land a single blow on sensei over the last fifty-five minutes. We've exhausted plan after plan, trap after trap, thinking that this one might actually catch him all to no avail. Now we're low on chakra, low on ideas, and just trying to grind this one out with brute force.

That's also not working.

I dart forward as I spot Yusei's arrow, cutting silently through the air behind Shikaku-sensei. Hideo lobs a kunai- easily deflected, but every distraction helps- from sensei's other side, then wades into melee range himself. The flash tag on Yusei's arrow goes off, nullifying sensei's absolute control over his territory for an instant, and Hido strikes high as I strike low.

It ends up not mattering, as Shikaku-sensei twists his body to the one and only position that allows him to avoid all three simultaneous strikes. Grabbing Hideo's collar, he casually flips the boy into me to send us both sprawling on our asses, all as he dodges a veritable storm of incoming poisoned projectiles.

He frowns. "Weird, could have sworn…" But I'm not going to give him time to think, and I roll into an attack again. Hideo's still on the ground, and therefore unable to support my direct assault, but Yusei's barrage of arrows and senbon make up some of the difference.

Until they stop.

I try not to let that bother me; I've still got one more trick up my sleeve. When the opponent appears to have no weakness, the only choice I have is to try to manufacture one for them. I move forward, imitating Hideo's flawed attack pattern from earlier. Sensei doesn't disappoint: he lazily sidesteps my strikes, steps over the sweeping low kick (thrown in for a little obfuscation), and snags my collar.

I react immediately, substituting myself for a prepared log before he can throw me. This log, however, isn't just any log: the particular log I switch myself for happens to have one of Yusei's explosive tags tacked on its side. And with my maneuver, Shikaku-sensei's left holding it.

It detonates just as my substitution technique completes.

I fully expect a jounin of his caliber to completely avoid the explosion, so I'm not counting on it to damage him at all. I do, however, expect the accompanying flash of light to free my teammate- the only reasonable option for why my ranged support would have ceased being that Yusei had fallen into sensei's shadow jutsu.

Imagine my surprise when Shikaku-sensei pushes the actively exploding log into his shadow, completely suppressing all aspects of the explosion save a muffled thump. "Checkmate," he declares, and the failure of my simple attempt to move confirms that I'm already trapped in his technique.

"You should be a little more careful with those tags, Anko." Sensei indicates my other teammate, still sprawled on the ground beside him. Whoops.

In the next clearing over, the timer begins to buzz angrily.

I feel the tension binding my muscles relax as Shikaku-sensei releases his Shadow Paralysis technique. The shadows recede, like black serpents slithering along the ground, back into their original humanoid shape. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a flutter of similar motion along the trunk of a tree.

Ah, that must be how he got Yusei.

"Did you really have to blow me up?" grumps Hideo, picking himself up and dusting himself off.

"Well, obviously I didn't succeed. Besides, I didn't expect you to just sit on your ass. When someone throws you down, you gotta get up right away, you know? Otherwise you're just in the way."

"Yeah, whatever."

Yusei drops out of a tree between us. "You didn't do the thing," he complains. "I was totally ready for it."

"Well," I rebutt. "There just wasn't an opening for it." In response to his disappointment, I tag on a "I'm sure we'll get another chance pretty soon."

The three of us join Shikaku-sensei in the original clearing, where he's finally silenced that buzzer. He looks up at our approach. "Well, kids. You did pretty well against me this time. A lot of good teamwork, at least until the end. A lot of good strategies too, I caught a hint of each of your signatures in those."

"Whatever," mumbles Hideo. "We still lost. Even with all that planning, all that practice, I still end up face down in the dirt."

Sensei just chuckles, but it bears a melancholy tone easily distinguished from his typical easy-going chuckle. "Kid, I'm not a jounin for nothing. That's kind of a big part of what I was hoping to teach you all today."

He sits down cross legged, and gestures for us to do the same. We form a little lopsided circle in the training ground clearing.

"So," he begins. "This is maybe a little more serious than we've been lately, but it's for good reason. You're all smart kids, right? And I really try to encourage you to use that, to approach your problems strategically, to outthink and outplay your enemies. I tell you that the best approach is to always use your minds, and that there's nothing you can't get past if you apply yourselves appropriately."

He looks up at the clouds for a long moment, then continues. "But I don't want that to kill you."

"No matter how smart you are or how skilled you become, there are always going to be people who are just better."

It's not hard for me to accept this lesson- after all, I train with Orochimaru-sama every day. Of course I know that some people are 'just better.' Hideo doesn't seem to have any trouble wrapping his head around the idea either (though I wonder how much of that is a self-esteem thing with him). Yusei, though, doesn't look too happy with the concept.

He makes to interrupt, but Shikaku-sensei raises a finger. "You need to learn how to recognize when a fight is unwinnable. You need to be able to tell when it's time to give up, when to turn around and go home instead of throwing your life away. Fundamentally, this is a question of understanding your limitations.

"If I fought you seriously, you'd all be dead within seconds."

He lets that statement hang there, making eye contact with each of us in turn, as if checking to see that we understand it.

He goes on more cheerfully, "That's not to say that you're not doing great, both as a team and individually. Like I said, you're really working together now. Hideo, I can really tell that you took my Taijutsu advice seriously. You're not making the same mistakes anymore.

"Anko, you're acting more independently during combat, and you're fighting alongside your team rather than in spite of them.

"Yusei, it seems you've taken pretty well to the tree-walking technique, and you're applying your fuuinjutsu to combat appropriately.

"You're all doing much better than I expected at this point, which is really why we needed to have this conversation. You see, I wanted to make sure you were all ready for your first full mission. I know I told your teachers about it, and hopefully they've passed that information onto you- since you'll be leaving tomorrow- but there's another thing I should say.

"I won't be the jounin accompanying you on this mission. Since all three of us- your teachers, that is; Yuuhi-san, Orochimaru, and myself- have important duties in the village, we've elected to have you go on missions with a good friend of ours. Now, I trust her and I trust you three, don't get me wrong, but I wanted you to understand… everything you need to come home safely."

* * *

We meet shortly before sunrise just inside Konoha's main gates. The three of us sit in companionable tranquility, sharing some onigiri Hideo's brought as we wait for our adult supervision.

Spotting the approach of familiar up-and-coming village superstar, I break the silence. "Hey, that's Namikaze-san, isn't it? Do you think Shikaku-sensei got him to take us on our mission?" He would be a pretty ideal mentor on missions; Orochimaru-sama's mentioned his capabilities as a shinobi positively, and I could see our trio of teachers trusting a someone like Namikaze-san.

"Nah," responds Yusei sullenly. "He's got his own team. Actually, you know, he's the bastard's teacher."

Hideo gulps down a mouthful of rice to ask, "Any particular bastard?" It's a valid question, given the sheer number of people we've heard Yusei refer to with such a vulgarity.

" _That_ bastard," responds the boy, pointing out another boy of similar stature who's just arrived at the scene. He's a strange, almost goofy sight, with his gravity-defying silver hair and the black mask covering most of his face. It's hard to tell, though, the effect of his slightly oversized chuunin flak jacket on his overall comic effect. One one hand, he's gawky; a preschooler playing at being a teenager. On the other, he's already a chuunin and could probably kick my ass. "That goddamned Hatake Kakashi bastard."

It's easy enough to put together the pieces, the underlying story. After all, I've only ever met two seven-year-old shinobi around here. What's the likelihood that they don't know each other. "Is that a rivalry I detect?"

"We went to the academy together. He was a dick. I'm sure he still is; three years isn't enough time to change _that_ much." Yusei sighs. "I think that's all I want to say about that."

We lapse back into silence, but this time it's awkward and uncomfortable as we watch Namikaze and his team wait for their final member to arrive. Just before I say something, anything, Hideo speaks up.

"So, I noticed something yesterday, when sensei threw me on my ass and you guys attacked him. Your arrows… they were coming at sensei from different directions simultaneously, but your senbon always came from the same side. What was up with that?"

"Oh! You noticed it!" Yusei excitedly whips out a black-feathered arrow from the quiver on his thigh. "This is my new fuuinjutsu-combat thing!"

"I shoot an arrow with a seal inked onto it. The seal triggers on impact, projecting a temporary seal onto whatever surface the arrow's embedded in." Here he indicates the arcane geometric patterns inked onto the pale wooden shaft of the arrow, tracing them up to the wrought iron arrowhead.

"This secondary seal absorbs the arrow, reorients it based on its initial trajectory, and fires it out with some particular kinetic energy. This energy's based on how much of the incoming arrow's kinetic energy my seal can recover- it's pretty decent, but not perfect and I have to use some of the energy to form the seal itself- as well as how much chakra I put into the original seal when I first launch the arrow.

"For practical reasons, I have to specify an upper limit on the number of times that first seal can trigger when I fire the arrow. Theoretically, though, it can continue to reflect- so to speak- off all surfaces until it bleeds off all the energy as air resistance or consumes it to power the fuuinjutsu."

I find myself curious about the way he words that last statement. "Practical reasons?" I ask. "Wouldn't it be really badass to use arrows that bounce forever?"

"No, no," interjects Hideo, "I get it! What's the point of an arrow that bounces off your target?"

"Surely you can write a seal that detects whether your arrow hit's your target?" It sounds, at least from the little I know about the awesome power of seals, within the realm of feasibility.

"I mean, if you can come up with a mathematical way to explain to the arrow what I meant for it to hit? It's probably possible," explains Yusei, "but I certainly haven't found it."

Oh, but there's an obvious solution: "What if you just tell it to stop bouncing when it hits a person? I bet you can tell if you've hit something with chakra easily enough, or even do something that has to do with detecting flesh on the arrowhead?"

Yusei chuckles at my naivety. "What, and lose the ability to hit targets with armor? Or like, if I want to shoot an arrow next to someone, like to scare them. Oh, and can I just say _Ew._ 'Detecting flesh,' Anko. Gods! I'd have to stab so many people to get that figured out. No thanks. That's a little too… hands-on experimentalist for me."

Eh, works for Orochimaru-sama. The practice katana we use for my kenjutsu lessons will cut through everything except for human flesh, so I assume building the inverse isn't too difficult. Still, Yusei raises some good points with regards to combat effectiveness.

"Well," I begin, but I'm interrupted before I can mention the practice swords (just as a matter of curiosity and to keep the conversation going).

"You must be team six!" A woman in a jounin vest stands suddenly among us. The first thing I notice about her is her incredibly long red hair, her high ponytail extending well past her waist. She wears the standard gray shinobi sandals, black form-fitting pants with obvious ceramic armor plating, and the green jounin vest over a high collared black turtleneck. Behind her striking violet eyes hides the flicker of intelligence and analysis. I can feel my role model counter click up by one; everything about her appearance screams 'serious combat specialist kunoichi.' Everything, that is, save for her bright and cheerful voice. "Let's see… The tall scowly one, the loud purple one, the tiny pointy one- you're even holding an arrow to make it easier- exactly like Shikaku said, you know."

We're all startled, but none so much as Yusei. I watch, amused, as he fumbles and then actually drops the arrow he'd been showing off just a moment earlier. It falls to the ground and then with a dim glow _into the ground_ before being expelled from the seal. The arrow rotates wildly as the process repeats over and over again.

Hideo, the jounin, and myself stand there for a long few seconds, watching Yusei's empowered arrow flop about like a dying fish.

Eventually, I tear my eyes away from the spectacle. "Alright, when's it going to stop?"

Yusei doesn't answer. I glance his way, only to see him staring at the newcomer with complete shock in his eyes.

"Are… you…" He manages to choke out, but before he can finish, the newcomer answers the question.

"Your temporary sensei, Uzumaki Kushina!"

* * *

 **Notes:**

Beta notes: 1) the controversial idea that orochimaru took anko as an apprentice because she's really good at ninja-ing, 2) that awkward feel when orochimaru may actually be the best teacher, 3) hero worship, perhaps a regularly scheduled meeting of the orochimaru fanclub, orochimaru-sama for days, 4) anko doesn't give half a shit about hideo, I actually felt sorry for him, 5) the way anko perceives yusei makes me want to slap that smug little bastard

Thesecretsix notes:

Self-sustaining spacetime loops - I'm picturing three large spatial dimensions compacted as the surface of a 3-torus (aka S1 x S1 x S1, cartesian product of three circles if you're into that language). We don't want a time dimension inside the storage space because we want to preserve them exactly as they went in. This is just a note to head off any questions, we'll probably have a more accessible discussion of this in-story soonish.

For those of you who were asking:

My characterization of orochimaru is probably heavily inspired by black. k. kat 's writing. If you like this, I strongly recommend reading her stuff (While everything she writes is amazing, the relevant Orochimaru works are Hardest of hearts; The sweetest of words; Hold on to your heart; and A Snake in the Grass, a Wolf at the Door). It's also mired in the list of topics I'm interested in discussing (dealing with loss, perfectionism complexes, a bunch of very smart people who are all a little broken, etc).

Yes, I know that the Third War didn't go like this. I know it started when Sakumo "screwed up" his mission. That's… okay. Just remember that some things are different in this universe. This is because the global politics are different, in a world in which the Land of Fire won the Battle of Rider Field (due to Yusei's first major analysis) and whatever other things happened differently as a consequence of Tactical using new, superior mathematical methods instead of playing war like a board game. I tried to drop a few hints here and there towards this, but I didn't feel the need to go into that because, honestly, it's not what I find exciting. I want to talk about characters and character interactions.

Get ready for more things to diverge going forward, as the changes ripple through. In canon, there's no reason to suggest that Anko was ever Shikaku's student- actually, I don't think there's any canon character considered to be Shikaku's student at all. In canon, there's no reason to suggest that Shikaku was ever in charge of war stuff before becoming the head jounin, or that Tactical even exists. In canon, maybe Orochimaru didn't want to train the perfect scientist student (having never met any child who could make him really want to teach?), maybe he just wanted to build the ultimate shinobi war machine. Who knows, just get ready for some divergences yo.

Also, yes, some mechanics are different. Especially fuuinjutsu. I'm going to probably spend a lot of time talking about fuuinjutsu. I'm sure you've noticed the focus since chapter zero.

Typically, in SI fics, the inserted character can actually discuss what things are different in-universe. This is harder, if not impossible, since one of my premises is that Yusei doesn't know Naruto canon.


	13. Ch 7 - Einmal ist Keinmal

**Chapter 7: Einmal ist Keinmal - ?**

She calls your name. It's a word you recognize as being your name, at least. It's sort of weird, almost like the actual sound she makes breaks down between your ears and your brain. Whatever it is, though, it's familiar and you recognize that it means _you._

She calls your name, so you look her way.

She's tall, much taller than you, much taller than most of the people you've seen in this reality.

Her hair is red, red like roses, red like blood, a red so deep you could drown, so fundamentally red that the color actually hurts you. Her hair is long, extending almost all the way to the floor. Unfettered by braid or ties, it flutters gently in some nonexistent dream-breeze. It's an unbroken curtain of red silk, perhaps the smoothest thing you've seen in your life.

You can't imagine hair like that belonging to any combat-ready kunoichi, but everything about her- the things she wears, the things she carries- says she must be one.

She wears a skintight purple blouse, partially concealed by a longsleeved black coat that bulges with integrated armor plating and barely revealed weaponry even as it hangs casually unbuttoned. Her black three-quarter leggings exhibit similar angular protrusions at the shin and thighs; the weapons pouch on her right hip and the four or five scrolls on her belt promise violence to any who interfere with her business.

Most telling, though, is the naked katana hanging off her left hip. For some reason she's eschewed a sheathe; it's deadly blade lays bare for all to witness and despair. Of particular interest to you are the sigils that run down the length of the sword- you've never seen anything quite like them before. You've got at least a passing familiarity with all families of sigils, all symbolic alphabets, currently in use. You have to, knowing these alphabets is a prerequisite to your study of the arcane art of sealing. But the marks that decorate this woman's weapon? They don't belong to anything you've encountered.

You tear your focus away from the blade, tracing the lines of her body back up from her waist, her toned abs evident through her blouse, her modest breasts, her strong and armored shoulders- wait, what's that slung over her left shoulder? A strung bow, built from some strange white material (you suspect bone, though your guess is a little baseless) rather than the typical wood or even the more exotic metals. But you can't make out too much more of the bow, her body impedes your vision, so you continue the journey up to her face.

There's something about it that perplexes you, but you can't figure out what exactly it is. It's not her red lips, nor is it the expression they wear (perhaps a smirk, perhaps the beginnings of an honest smile, you can't be trusted to know the difference). It's not the gentle slope of her nose nor is it the single metal stud that pierces one nostril. It's not even the three silver loops she wears on each delicate ear, uncharacteristic as that amount of jewelry may be for someone in this profession of violence.

It's her eyes, you think. Something about her eyes catches you off guard. If only you could focus on it, you'd be able to say yes, it's the-

It's her eyes, you think, there's just something off about her eyes. They're an unexpected color, you think. It's not clear though, you try to push through the haze, you had a thought about her eyes and where did it go-

It's definitely her eyes, you realize. There's clearly something wrong with her eyes, you know that for an absol-

Something's off, something's fighting you, some property of this woman's eyes-

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Something's wrong, something's weird, you can't tell what it is. Your instincts tell you not to pursue the issue, so you don't.

She says that word again, the one you can't hear but recognize as being your name. Or is it a name you had once? Or is the word something more fundamental than that, some label that corresponds to your soul, to your very essence? Who is this woman, to command such a power, to possess such a knowledge?

You ask her this question and she laughs a gentle, melodic laugh. It reverberates through the non-air of your dreamscape, seeping into your being, replacing your joys and sorrows with her mild amusement. It's a violation of your humanity, but at the same time it's just _okay;_ the discomfort you expect never comes, somehow the deconstruction of _who you are_ is just incidental to her amusement _._ That bothers you more than anything, more than any pain you might- should- have felt. When did this just become _okay_?

She sees that her laughter has on you, how it's ripping you apart internally, and ever-so-benevolently stops. She raises one hand, making with it a slight come-hither motion. You lean in towards her, intending to catch every nuance of her words as she says:

 _Remember_.

What?

What should you remember? You've never seen her before. She's so distinctive, you'd remember for sure if she was someone you'd ever met.

 _You don't remember._

She sounds disappointed, but you're not sure how you can tell that. It's not because of any tone in her voice, you're not sure she's even saying the words out loud. Her mouth certainly doesn't seem to moving.

You have bigger issues with her statement, though, that supercede the impossibility of her making it in the first place. You can't just tell me to remember something I never knew, you protest, as you beg for more information.

Who are you, how do you know my name, how can I remember you, what's wrong with your ey-

c̢̠̫͎̿̾ͮͬ̆̒͋ͭͮ̄ͤ̈̋͆̅́͢͡ḩ̵͚͕̥̿̓ͫ̃̇̃̒̇̄̾̑ͪ̍̌ą̝̜͔̭͙̻̣̣̣̮͔̟̯̱͕̭ͨͮ͐͂ͨ̂̎̎ͥ͂͆͌͐͊͡ô͊ͪ̎̃̆͗̏͌̌́҉̶̤̹̳̫̤̥̳̺̻̦͔̙̟̗̜͢s̢̧͓̳͚̳̬̩͖ͩ͛̇ͨ̎ͮ̽̎̍̊̇c̢̠̫͎̿̾ͮͬ̆̒͋ͭͮ̄ͤ̈̋͆̅́͢͡ḩ̵͚͕̥̿̓ͫ̃̇̃̒̇̄̾̑ͪ̍̌ą̝̜͔̭͙̻̣̣̣̮͔̟̯̱͕̭ͨͮ͐͂ͨ̂̎̎ͥ͂͆͌͐͊͡ô͊ͪ̎̃̆͗̏͌̌́҉̶̤̹̳̫̤̥̳̺̻̦͔̙̟̗̜͢s̢̧͓̳͚̳̬̩͖ͩ͛̇ͨ̎ͮ̽̎̍̊̇c̢̠̫͎̿̾ͮͬ̆̒͋ͭͮ̄ͤ̈̋͆̅́͢͡ḩ̵͚͕̥̿̓ͫ̃̇̃̒̇̄̾̑ͪ̍̌ą̝̜͔̭͙̻̣̣̣̮͔̟̯̱͕̭ͨͮ͐͂ͨ̂̎̎ͥ͂͆͌͐͊͡ô͊ͪ̎̃̆͗̏͌̌́҉̶̤̹̳̫̤̥̳̺̻̦͔̙̟̗̜͢s̢̧͓̳͚̳̬̩͖ͩ͛̇ͨ̎ͮ̽̎̍̊̇c̢̠̫͎̿̾ͮͬ̆̒͋ͭͮ̄ͤ̈̋͆̅́͢͡ḩ̵͚͕̥̿̓ͫ̃̇̃̒̇̄̾̑ͪ̍̌ą̝̜͔̭͙̻̣̣̣̮͔̟̯̱͕̭ͨͮ͐͂ͨ̂̎̎ͥ͂͆͌͐͊͡ô͊ͪ̎̃̆͗̏͌̌́҉̶̤̹̳̫̤̥̳̺̻̦͔̙̟̗̜͢s̢̧͓̳͚̳̬̩͖ͩ͛̇ͨ̎ͮ̽̎̍̊̇

She steps forward and places her hand on your cheek. It's soft, gentle; her hand lacks the callouses you'd expect on the hands of an archer or swordswoman. She leans down, coming face-to-face with you. You feel her light breaths against your skin, as she whispers to you.

 _You are forgiven._

She kisses your forehead and the world shatters around you.

 _Awaken, child._

You open your eyes.

* * *

 **Yusei**

I wake in a cold sweat, short of breath, a familiar coppery taste filling my mouth. The sun has yet to rise properly, but the sky is a transitionary shade of gray that informs me that dawn will come soon. I roll ungracefully out of bed and make my way to my apartment's kitchenette, pouring myself a glass of water.

As I rinse the residue of blood from my mouth, I try to remember what I was dreaming. It's not the first time I've woken like this, in this miserable state, but I have no idea what causes it. Some sort of nightmare, I've theorized, maybe something terrible from my past life. Those memories… they've faded into the background. It's easier for me to pull up specific mathematical techniques or the plots of novels I had once read than it is the particular details of my life. I know that I died of some sort of illness, though I can't recall which sort. I remember suffering, but only in the abstract.

The unconscious recollection of such an event; that's the only thing that my waking mind can imagine that could result in a physical backlash of this sort. Mulling it over for another minute, I decide that I'm not educated enough in this subject, and I make a note to ask Yamanaka Inoichi for recommendations at some point in the future. I make another note to accompany the first, detailing the physical symptoms that accompanied the rudeness of my awakening.

It's always nice to have these things written out.

I flip back through my notebook, looking for the past few incidents of this nature. Exactly as I suspected, they're occurring more frequently. I had an attack- if that's the word to use here- only a month ago, but that one was separated from its predecessor by three months. The intensity of the physical effects on me has been somewhat inconsistent as well: today's incident involved mild hemoptysis, but that's been largely absent in previous incidents.

It will all have to wait though, today's the day of team six's first official C rank mission and I've got little under an hour to get myself prepared. My things are already packed, so all that remains are my daily ablutions. Picking up my toiletries and a towel, I head out to my floor's communal showers.

* * *

Hideo establishes himself as one of my top three favorite members of team six when he arrives at the village gate in possession of enough onigiri to break all of our fasts. It's an amazing improvement over the breakfast-style ration bar I'd been planning on eating, even if the onigiri doesn't go with my usual coffee (An americano, even if the drink's namesake doesn't exist here, thank you very much. The way I take my daily coffee is one of few things I can cling to as a reminder of my origin, and I can't see that ever changing. Gods know that I tried every reasonable way of making coffee before deciding that this was my favorite).

"Hey," says Anko, putting a violent end to my morning post-caffeine idyll as she points at an approaching jounin. "That's Namikaze-san, isn't it? Do you think Shikaku-sensei got him to take us on our mission?"

I like Namikaze enough, or at least the abstract idea of working with him. The problem, of course, is with Namikaze's hanger on. "Nah," I tell Anko. "He's got his own team." Then, because I might not have made it clear why that's a problem, I explain "Actually, you know, he's the bastard's teacher."

"Any particular bastard?" Asks my second favorite teammate, soon to be my first favorite because all kidding aside this is the best onigiri ever.

Speak of the devil and he may appear, with a stupid lopsided silver hairdo and a black cloth mask that just screams 'I am a shinobi and I demand to be taken seriously' obscuring most of his face. "That bastard," I explain, nodding in his general direction. "That goddamned Hatake Kakashi bastard."

And seriously, when did he become a chuunin? Not that I'm jealous or anything, just taken off guard, I swear.

"Is that a rivalry I detect?" Anko finds a sore spot and dives right into it, as per usual. That sentence could really describe about seventy-five percent of Anko's words and actions, I muse. Actually, her entire combat style is based on a similar philosophy.

I'm tempted to leave the question hanging, to not give her the satisfaction of knowing that she got to me. However, I'm honestly afraid of what she'd do in response. Even now, I wonder if she's about to march right up to Hatake and say something horrifically embarrassing to me. Better to just give in now, while I'm still ahead. "We went to the academy together," I explain. "He was a dick. I'm sure he still is; three years isn't enough time to change _that_ much."

I shrug, as if that's all there is to it, as if Hatake didn't torment me in the academy, as if he didn't stomp my face into the dirt every week, as if he didn't tell me I'd never make it as a ninja, as if he never got to me. Anko doesn't need to know about that, even though I suspect that she wouldn't tease me for it.

Somewhere behind our casual antagonistic banter, there's a genuine friendship based on common life experiences. We're both orphans, clanless so-called-trash from the worst parts of Konoha. We were both recognized for our exceptionalism by genius mentors who helped us rise out of that, who provided us with exactly the tools we needed to grow. We both have abrasive personalities and a casual disregard for this period's social mores.

We get along, even when it seems that we don't. _Especially_ when it seems like we don't.

But even if I knew for a fact that she'd be sympathetic, I still wouldn't tell her just how much I loathe Hatake Kakashi for how he's treated me. I don't need her sympathy, just like I don't need the swirl of negative emotion that threatens to take over when I see that smug bastard. Yes, that was a problem for me a few years ago. But I've moved past it, I've proven myself as a capable member and squad leader in tactical. And now, I'm proving myself as a combat-capable shinobi, even if that was never what I set out to accomplish.

Success, they say, is the best revenge. The only way to beat those that push you down with their doubt is to thrive.

Hideo asks me about the newest addition to my arsenal, the fuuinjutsu enhanced arrows that flit between dimensions to create the illusion of rebounding off of arbitrary surfaces. I'm proud of this development, not in the least because it's the first direct fruit- my first truly original creation- of my studies into the art of sealing. It also has the more practical effect of aiding me in concealing my position during combat, as well as dramatically increasing the number of available trajectories I can use to put an arrow in a target. I'm pleasantly surprised to hear both of my teammates taking such an interest into the field I'm passionate about, and the reasonably intelligent conversation that follows.

My surprise at the jounin that appears suddenly within our circle is markedly less pleasant. "You must be team six!" exclaims the interloper. I react immediately, springing back and attempting to assess her threat level.

I'm struck by the strongest feeling of deja vu. There's something about this woman that bothers me, and I wish I knew what it was. From her long, waist-length red hair (tied up in a high ponytail) and the crest she wears on the collar of her turtleneck, I know she's an Uzumaki. My knowledge of recent history takes it from there: there's only one Uzumaki in the village, the elite jounin Uzumaki Kushina.

This is, of course, corroborated both the jounin vest she wears and the fact that I've heard the name Kushina come up in maybe of Shikaku-sensei's personal stories enough to infer that she might be a trusted friend of his and a viable candidate to accompany us on a mission.

All of this is logical enough, so what is _it_ that's so wrong. And is 'wrong' the best word to describe the vibe I'm getting from her? I'm not sure. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that something's clicked in a way I wasn't expecting. It's almost as if something's gone right, dreadfully, horrifically, unexpectedly _right_.

It's so gods damned bizarre.

She says something, but I don't hear it. I have… priorities. I _need_ to figure out what's going on here. It's so rare that I'm completely stumped, I have almost no practice with it.

A touch of deduction, a dash of induction, fill in the gaps with abduction; that's the way we attack these problems. I dredge up all of the information I possess that might be even tangentially relevant.

Deductive reasoning is the art of "top-down" logic, broadly summarized as a method of reaching valid conclusions of decreasing generality. Inductive reasoning is, in essence, the opposite; we attempt to form arguments about generalities given specifics, then assess the strength of those arguments. Abduction, on the other hand, allows us to build a theory that accounts for some particular observation. Thus, abduction is the primary generator of hypothesis in my method, and the other two reasoning frameworks are used to test it.

In mathematics, one typically uses one of frameworks to build or assess an argument. Shikaku-sensei preaches the simultaneous usage of all three.

My mind churns with possibilities, assessing the strength and validity of each explanation for this bizarre resonance between myself and Uzumaki Kushina. Most are discarded as quickly as they're conceived, but some include ideas worth detailed exploration.

I quickly develop the obviously incorrect hypothesis that she must be related to me, possibly through being my parent. Such a hypothesis is easily falsifiable, or at least refuted through the available evidence, but considering it might still reveal something about the nature of things.

The stronger hypothesis here is of course the idea that Uzumaki Kushina might be my parent. An obvious point against this theory is our relative age- at a maximum, she's in her early twenties while i'm eight and a half. While it's not physically impossible, there's a reasonable hint that such an event did not occur in the fact that the Uzumaki in question remains healthy enough to be an active and highly ranked shinobi.

There are also some psychological and socially linked clues to back this up: Uzumaki Kushina is a kunoichi in high social standing in the village, something that would likely not have been the case if she'd had some sort of affair or scandal that would have produced a child a decade ago (this particular version of semi-modern/semi-feudal-era japanese society that we live in, while surprisingly liberal about sexuality and gender, manages to be on the conservative side with regard to inheritance, succession, and families in general. It doesn't actually come as much of a surprise, though, given the prevalence of shinobi bloodlines and familially linked techniques).

Individually, each of these points might be taken to be insufficient evidence for any argument. Together they're enough for me to estimate the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis as approaching unity.

To refute the weaker hypothesis in which I might be an unrecognized scion of the Uzumaki clan, we have only circumstantial evidence. We begin with a comparison of my facial features against those of Uzumaki Kushina, the only Uzumaki whose appearance is known. While we do both possess red hair, hers is several shades darker than my own. Red hair is a recessive trait that tends to be completely dominated by all other hair colors rather than mixing, so the probability that my other parent's hair color might combine with the Uzumaki red to produce my own hair color is low. The Uzumaki seem to possess particularly round faces, which puts my high cheekbones at odds with their typical appearance. Finally, the Uzumaki were known for their interesting eye colors- a fact that appears in most books that mention the clan at all- violet and blue. It's said that while the main line of the family tends to possess the more rare violet eyes, even the most distant relative wears eyes of vivid blue. Moving on, the Uzumaki tended to possess unfathomably deep reserves of vitality and chakra- I, on the other hand, can't scrounge up enough physical energy to manage a substitution technique.

We must not, however, fail to mention the singular point in favor of this hypothesis: the Uzumaki aptitude for fuuinjutsu. They say that the art itself was born when the ancient Uzumaki decided it would be to their benefit to bind the gods of their land to their wills. Every Uzumaki, the stories say, is born with an intuitive understanding of fuuinjutsu, and even those who are never formally taught the art can invent some form of it on their own.

Still, I can feel safe in rejecting that the hypothesis that I'm a mainline Uzumaki with high confidence. I can't completely rule out that I have some Uzumaki blood in me, but surely no more than the next Konoha shinobi and not to any significant concentration. A theory in which this blood link would result in the _wrongness_ or _rightness_ or whatever this feeling is…well, the logical conclusion is that most of Konoha should be quivering in their shinobi sandals.

Another hypothesis I can form is that this is some sort of resonance between two fuuinjutsu masters (or okay, experts, I'm still years away from any sort of mastery). As previously acknowledged, the Uzumaki were notorious for their fuuinjutsu. It's unlikely that elite jounin Kushina is an exception to this. An interesting case of this theory is the scenario in which she's actually the fuuinjutsu master that wrote those small orange notebooks of sealing theory that I initially studied, and we're similarly attuned to the behavior of spacetime. It seems plausible enough, I suppose, so I can't rule it out.

As I move forward, considering other hypotheses, I encounter yet another aspect of this phenomenon. My eye, as I continue to stare fruitlessly at Uzumaki Kushina, is drawn to features that are missing. For some reason, I'm convinced that she should be wearing all sorts of piercings- multiple piercings, on the ears and nose- or that her hair should be longer and darker. And there's something about her eyes, the violet, the violet, I don't know what it is I expect to see with her eyes but somehow that just isn't it.

But how can I expect to see some feature on a person I've never encountered before. Maybe I _have_ met her after all, maybe she came recruiting at the orphanage before Shikaku came. She'd have been younger, and perhaps in her youth she wore this jewelry and her hair in the manner that my mind insists she's supposed to.

I can't recall such a thing, so it must have happened before I was properly self aware, before my memory became as perfect as it is today.

The idea scares me, that there was once some time in which I didn't have perfect recall, in which things might have happened to _me_ that I can no longer remember. It's one thing to not remember my past life- it's as if all of that happened to some other person- but a beast of a different nature to not remember events that someone else in this reality might.

Rationally, I know that it shouldn't scare me. Of course there was time in which my mind wasn't developed enough to retain memories. There was also a time before I existed- that's something else I won't have memories of. There was a time in which I was a fetus, possessing neither senses nor brain. I understand all of this.

Perhaps it's something about this idea that vaguely remember it, that the ghost of the memory is able to haunt me even as the memory itself eludes me.

I need to know the answer to this, but it's becoming clear that I don't possess the information necessary to solve it myself. I want to ask, but I don't want to be told. I want this problem to not exist; I want to go back to my life, the life I had one minute ago, when I wasn't afraid of my imperfections. I want to brush this all under the rug, and not even consider that my subjective experience of the world is something less than the canonical version of existence, that I might be the supporting character in someone else's story.

 _No_ , I tell myself. _now is not the right time to freak out about your existence, Yusei_.

I force myself back to reality. Anko's looking at me expectantly. She must have asked me something, but I've missed the question. Nevermind that.

I regulate my breathing. I had a question, didn't I? One that doesn't make me sound like a crazy person.

"Are you-" I begin to ask, but I'm immediately interrupted.

"Your temporary sensei, Uzumaki Kushina!"

* * *

We troop out of Konoha's main gates all in a line, like nervous little ducklings following Kushina. This, I realize, is actually my first time leaving the village's walls.

"Alright!" Our temporary instructor whirls around to face us. "So, this is your first official mission, right? Shikaku said he wanted me to give you guys a kind of missions overview, just kind of explain how missions work, you know?"

She doesn't wait for a response.

"So you obviously know about mission rankings; D, C, B, A, and S. I don't have to go over that sort of stuff, right? Your mission today's going to be a C rank, a pretty typical delivery mission. Usually you- or your team leader, in this case me- receive a mission scroll at the Mission Assignment Desk, over at the base of the Hokage Tower."

Rummaging through her weapons pouch, Kushina produces a small scroll. As she holds it out to Hideo, she continues her lesson.

"Sometimes a mission is assigned directly by the Hokage or an elite jounin instead, and often missions of this sort might not actually have a scroll associated with them. This is more typical with high rank missions or missions that are particularly time sensitive."

Having read over the scroll, Hideo passes it to Anko.

"Hmm, I don't know if there's much more to say on that...Oh! You can usually choose to accept or decline a mission, but not always. And sometimes you might not know what a mission entails unless you accept it, for secrecy reasons, you know?"

Anko passes the scroll over to me. I look over it, quickly skimming over the boilerplate to find the substance.

 _Rank: C_

 _Category: Delivery_

 _Destination: Port Degarashi, L. Tea_

 _Recipient: Haruchō Wasabi_

 _Package: One medium scroll container, forest green, contents undisclosed. To be delivered with seal intact._

There are few more details in the short paragraph that follow: the preferred delivery route, a note suggesting the likelihood of encountering bandits, the importance of making the delivery before a particular date (two days from now), and a reminder to only present the package to the head of the Wasabi family.

Overall, about what I expected, I suppose.

Kushina continues her exposition. "Alright, one of you can keep that and someone else can hold on to this." She presents us with the forest green cylinder, about a thirty centimeters in height and three centimeters in diameter, referred to in the mission statement. It's fairly uniform in appearance, its only irregularities being the red wax official seal of the the Land of Fire over the opening and a simple leather carrying strap.

"Anko," I suggest. She's by far the best combatant of the three of us. If push comes to shove and we're forced to defend the scroll, I think I have more confidence in her ability to keep it safe than I do in my own.

My teammate gracefully accepts her new role as scroll transporter extraordinaire. Anko secures the scroll in the small of her back, tightening the the strap over her shoulder to prevent it from bouncing around.

"I think that's pretty much everything! Any questions? No? Great! So, we'll follow the route provided for us today. It takes us straight along the main road to the Land of Tea, so there should be no confusion with that. Umm, and we'll do it at a run. I'll try to set a reasonable pace. Everyone set?"

This time, she waits for us all to provide some assent before exclaiming, "Alright! Let's go!"

We begin down the road, starting at a jog and escalating gradually to my fastest sustainable run. I'm under no illusions that not the limiting factor on our pace- in my defence, I've got shorter legs. We fall into a diamond formation as we go, with Kushina taking point, Hideo and Anko filling the center, and myself bringing up the rear. It's a logical formation if we expect to confront any enemies head-on, and since we're only concerned about petty bandits that seems to be a reasonable assumption.

"Hey, Yusei?" After about fifteen minutes of running, Anko indicates the scroll container strapped to her back. "You think you could seal this into something more portable? It feels kinda unwieldy; I'd worry about it getting in my way if we got attacked."

"No-" I start to explain why that's inadvisable but cut myself off when I realize that Kushina has also begun to explain.

"In general, that's not a safe decision to make. Unless you know for a fact that the contents of that container do not include any seals that might be disrupted when you put them into a storage seal, just assume that horrible things will happen, you know?"

Anko turns back to me, as if asking for confirmation on what Kushina's just said. "Right, so maybe a more intuitive would be to discuss an example. Let's say that there's a storage seal on the scroll you're carrying right now, which seems pretty likely unless we're literally just carrying a simple message, alright?"

Anko nods, so I go on. "So the simplest and most typical storage seal I can draw might be described in common language as an interface between- or maybe, uh, the instructions on how to move something from- our world, consisting generally of three-plus-one large spacetime dimensions, to an artificial world with reduced dimensionality, perhaps only three compact spatial dimensions.

"That was a little bit of jargon, but basically the seal's role then can be distilled to it's essence: it explains how to separate whatever I'm sealing from the particular spacetime that is supporting it, and then how to represent that object in some other particular spacetime.

"And so the seal only knows how to deal with an object that's represented in our three-plus-one standard spacetime, right? So what happens when I put that seal inside another seal exactly like it? The short answer is that the outermost seal, the one that lives in our world, functions normally. However, the inner seal fails. It doesn't know how to translate an object from set of three spatial dimensions to another. Depending on how well the theory degrades, perhaps it'll gracefully release whatever it was holding- or perhaps it'll explode and we'll all die when we open the seals.

"Remember, though, that story is just an example. I could also build a significantly more complex seal that understands how to interface arbitrary dimensional spacetime against some particular dimensionality, and though it would cost a lot more in terms of time to make and energy consumed, my story about layering seals would now work.

While Anko seemingly accepts my explanation as truth, Kushina actually laughs out loud. "Kid, you just gave one of the most convoluted explanations I've ever heard for that. Even most fuuinjutsu masters don't build their storage seals by dimensional regulation." She continues to chuckle. "Still, you chose a pretty decent example. I'll give you nine out of ten for picking that out, but maybe a four on actually explaining it, you know?"

I snort. "I thought it went okay. You think you can do better?" Most likely she can; my question is less of a challenge and more of an invitation. I really do want to learn.

"Sure, easy." She tosses a smirk over her shoulder at us, then goes forward with her explanation. "The core task of a storage seal is to take something from our world- and sure, Anko, if you want to use Yusei's language, our spacetime- and put it elsewhere. Now it's easy to conceptualize this if you imagine our world as some geometric shape, and then there's a well-defined inside and outside. We'll say that we live inside. Therefore taking something from our world and putting it elsewhere means putting it _outside_ of the shape.

"So what happens when we put a storage seal within a storage seal? The first seal puts the second outside of our world, but the second seal puts its contents outside of even that. What's outside of the outside? It's not well defined, so the seal fails."

"Not bad," I admit. "Definitely more intuitive than mine."

"Wait," interjects Hideo, until now content to spectate. Addressing Kushina, he begins: "Yusei's explanation is almost certainly more rigorously correct. I mean, his scenario outlines a specific problem- specific requirements that fail to be met. Yours, on the other hand, seems a bit more fuzzy.

"I mean, Yusei's seals seem to work, so I'll assume his numbers accurately describe reality. If I apply those to your example, then our world can be thought of as some four-dimensional hypersphere with an inside and outside. Then, surely I can define an infinite number of spheres with finite volume outside the reality hypersphere. It's a simple question then, what's outside of both the our world and the sphere of the first seal? Any other of the infinite remaining spheres."

"No!" both Kushina and I rebut simultaneously. Again, I defer to her seniority, but she nods back at me with an 'after you.'

"Well, Hideo, you're mixing your metaphors."

"What he's saying is you can't try to tell both the stories at the same time."

"It's like any other math, right? You define your axioms, your operations, etc; Basically you set your rules and then you work within them."

"Trying to combine these stories, to use points from one to disprove the other, it's a bit like using the teachings of the Cult of Jashin to disprove Shintoism."

The conversation continues as such as we run through the empty roads towards the Land of Tea.

* * *

We run until the sun reaches its zenith, and then stop at a roadside diner for lunch. "You've made good time," affirms Kushina, "so we can stop here for uh, maybe twenty minutes, you know? It's a nice place, I stop by here from time to time to meet some contacts."

"Thanks, Uzumaki-sensei." Has Anko really been calling her that this whole time? I suppose I don't pay as much attention to these sorts of formalities as I really ought to, but… it just doesn't suit Kushina.

"Yeah, no, that's way too formal and I'm not _really_ your teacher. Senpai at best, alright?"

"Sure," I say since Anko and Hideo are busy boggling at the informality. "Thanks, Kushina-senpai."

"I'll be right back," she says with a smile. "I've gotta talk to someone." She disappears behind a bright pink privacy curtain.

I'm hungry enough, so I drag my dumbstruck teammates to some open stools at the counter and order the diner's lunch special. As a cheerful old man places a piping hot bowl in front of me, Anko and Hideo snap back to reality. "You can't just call her by her given name," Hideo hisses.

"Eh," I shrug, too busy slurping up my rice with gusto. Pausing briefly, I expound: "She wanted us to be casual."

"But like," says Anko, having successfully placed two more orders for the lunch special. "I'm sure she didn't mean _that_ casual."

"We all call Shikaku-sensei Shikaku-sensei and that's okay."

"Yeah, but he's really relaxed about… well, everything."

"Well, Hideo, you're not wrong. But I remain unconvinced that you even have a point."

Anko leans in, distracting me from my sure-to-be-brutal takedown of Hideo. "I mean, you can call your friends by their given names, but usually anyone with a family name prefers to be..."

"Surely," I declare, "I can count anyone who debates fuuinjutsu theory with me for four hours and thirty-seven minutes as a friend. Maybe even a particularly close friend."

Hideo's mouth drops open at (presumably) my audacity, causing a partially chewed piece of fried pork to drop back into his bowl. "Uh, ew?"

Once we've all eaten and washed down our meal with a cup of tea each, our twenty minutes are close to up. I look around the shop for Kushina, failing to spot her.

"Did she say when she'd be back?" I ask my teammates.

Anko shakes her head, "I don't think so, but she definitely said twenty minutes."

"She went through there, right?" I indicate the curtain. "Hideo, if you would?"

I pass him a menu, which he holds up to hide his face. "Byakugan," he whispers, and then furrows his brow. "It's just the kitchen, she's not there."

Well, shit.

"I couldn't help but overhear," the cheerful proprietor ambles over to us and leans across his counter. "But you wouldn't happen to be looking for the Lady Uzumaki, now, would ya? I take it you're the students she mentioned."

Hideo, still concealed behind his menu, subtly forms the "all-clear" hand signal and taps it against my leg. Alright, he'll have checked over this old man and ensured that he is what he looks like. The Byakugan, as Hideo's explained, nullifies most conventional methods of disguise; it detects both genjutsu and physical transformations with ease. Furthermore, he'll be able to tell whether the man's a trained shinobi from the development of his chakra coils, or if he's concealed some weapon, and so on.

The "all-clear" hand signal indicates to me that he's on the level, at least up through where we can distinguish.

"Do you know where she went?" I ask. Even if he tells me a lie, that'll provide us with some kind of information we didn't have about this whole situation.

He nods, then shrugs. "Well, not exactly… but she left me a note for you lot." He hands over a folded piece of paper. As I unfold it, my teammates lean in to read.

 _Hey team six_ , _something came up and I had to go. I have full confidence that you'll be able to complete the mission without me. I'll meet you at the destination tonight._

 _Best of luck,_

 _Kushina._

 _PS. Yusei, maybe we'll continue our conversation about how I think you're horrifically abusing dimensional regulation._

I finish reading first. "Huh," I declare. "The postscript pretty much proves it's really from her, right?"

The three of us exchange looks of rising panic. Anko puts our collective thoughts into words.

"The fuck do we do now?"

* * *

 **Notes**

Beta notes: 1) in which a coincidence causes yusei to have his first existential crisis, 2) in which a mathematician heavily edits the thing that a student of theoretical physics calls logical reasoning, 3) mad perspective on perspective action, 4) oh my god kushina's verbal tic, you really went whole ham on it, 5) you play fast but not too loose with geometry, 6) i just realized you actually think about all the honorifics and now that's a thing i have to proofread everytime

Thesecretsix notes:

Einmal ist keinmal, literally translated from German as 'once is never.' Who catches the reference? It's got a few prongs to it, one literal and one literary, that add up to a pathway towards some of the philosophical architecture of our plot. Don't worry, I don't think it's evident yet, we've really just begun to introduce the first few elements of it.

I'm pretty thrilled. Things are really kicking off the way I wanted them to!

The bit in the dream section that happens when Yusei can't focus on her eyes, it should look like creepy script and stuff. It might not on every computer, in which case I apologize, but I think the message gets across even when it breaks?

My beta reader's a pure-math guy, and you won't believe how many notes gave back on my treatment of logic and geometry in this chapter. I actually rewrote those sections quite a few times before he was satisfied, but now I think I might have a better grasp on how to make these kinds of arguments.

Thanks for sticking with me, y'all, I know this chapter took me around a month to produce but like I said, it needed a _lot_ of revision. And maybe I put out like three RWBY fics in the meanwhile..?


	14. Interlude 6 - The First Step

**Interlude 6 - The First Step**

 **I: Six Meetings Before Lunch- Shikaku**

"Nara-san, good afternoon."

I startle, narrowly avoiding splashing beer on my jounin vest. That's not a voice I'd ever expect to hear in a seedy bar-come-food-stall like this, and certainly not with the sun so high.

"Ah, Yuuhi-san." I greet him as if I'd expected him. It never pays to let another shinobi know they've snuck up on you. I'd rather gain a reputation for being clumsy than unobservant. "Would you like to join me for lunch?"

As he eyes my fried octopus and wasabi with disdain, I take the opportunity to examine the junior division head. It's not often that Yuuhi Hideki emerges from his cryptanalysis crypt, deep in the bowels of the Hokage tower, and on the rare occasion that he does it's atypical for him to make it much further than Inoichi's office in Anbu-Intel. He's unused to being outside at this hour, that much shows as he squints those alien red eyes of his. Nor is he dressed for the weather; I'm sure his heavy coat keeps him warm enough in his sub-basement office, but he looks quite uncomfortable in the thick summer heat.

"Thank you, but I must decline." He stands awkwardly just within the awning of the food stall, figiting, unsure if he's really welcome. Yuuhi's here to ask me a question, but he doesn't know if he has the authority to question me. It's a behavior I recognize well enough; most of my subordinates exhibit it at one point or another. They quickly learn that I don't stand on ceremony with these sorts of practical matters- questions to increase the askers' understanding are always welcome.

Now, Hideki here is of similar enough rank and age to me that there's really no reason he should have any such fear. What's happened, though, is that he's neglected to practice his social skills. The head of cryptanalysis is a gawky teenager in a grown man's body, uncomfortable with his seat at the big kids' table. He steps lightly, attempting to balance his baseless fear of causing offense with his boundless curiosity.

And I'm pretty sure I can guess exactly what it this man wants to ask me. I could answer it now, but that would be… no fun. Besides, there's plenty else I can get out of him as he waffles on his agenda.

"Have a seat, my friend."

I tap at the bar, passing a quick signal to the proprietress, and she soon sets a beer in front of my colleage. Hideki frowns, but peer pressure and politeness combine to create an unstoppable force; he takes a sip and grimaces at the taste. I wait for him to repeat this a few times before I let our conversation progress.

"I've actually been hoping to speak with you for some time," I candidly admit. "I have a few questions about what you've been teaching Hideo-kun." Strictly speaking, this line of questioning is quite out of bounds- it was only a short while ago that I was bristling at having my methods questioned- but I'm honestly curious how far he'll let me push him.

Strangely, he perks up. "Ah yes, well, we've, uh- well, I say we but I really just mean Hideo-kun- been making a study on asymmetric cryptography. Admittedly, I didn't see the value in such a thing until very recently but Hideo-kun's been quite bullish on it. He thinks it's the future of verifiable communications and I'm coming to agree." Yuuhi's positively brimming with excitement on this subject, but I cut him off before he begins to spout mathematical jargon at me. Gods know I have to put up with enough of that from my apprentice, I don't need a second source in my life. Besides, that's not where Hideo's weak; Hideki's lacking in a very different area.

"Actually, Yuuhi-san, I was hoping to learn about his combat skills."

"Oh, uh, yes. Of course. I… Well, I suppose he works with his clan on that?"

I raise an eyebrow.

"Of course," Yuuhi scurries to justify himself. "We spar on occasion, but as I rely quite heavily on genjutsu and, well, the Byakugan and the Gentle Fist, well…" He takes a few quick sips of the beer, again grimacing as he swallows.

I immediately feel a sharp pang of guilt. What am I doing, toying with this man for my own amusement? I've looked at him, found a gap in his armor, and begun to pry out of some sick habit. This is a smart man, a loyal shinobi of the leaf, a fellow member of the isolated community of knowledge workers in the Konohan military.

Why am I behaving like this, making myself feel big at his expense? Is it just habit? Have I taught myself to attack, attack, attack to the point that I don't know how to just have a conversation? I down the rest of my drink in one pass.

"His, uh, his mother, I believe-" Yuuhi stumbles along trying to justify himself, but I cut him off.

"Mah, don't stress, Yuuhi-san." It's definitely time for me to try to salvage this, lest I alienate my fellow teacher. "He's been improving a lot recently. Hideo's learning to to apply that mind of his as he fights, you know?"

He relaxes ever so slightly, now that I've indicated some approval of his methods.

"But that's enough about that- I imagine you're here to ask about the C rank?"

"Oh, uh, yes. Yes. I'd assumed you might be leading the team, but, well, uh, of course you're not. You're here. And…" He trails off.

I finish the thought. "You were wondering who I sent the kids with and what exactly I've got planned for them?"

"Namikaze-san, I assume?"

"Not quite." It's easy to see why someone might make that assumption, given my friendship with Minato, but just he's not the right fit for team six. "Hideo might do alright under Minato, but I can't imagine Anko or Yusei thriving in…" I trail off, unsure of the diplomatic way to convey the image of the order-loving Minato trying to direct my students' different flavors of chaos.

Surprisingly, Yuuhi gets it. "Right. From what Hideo tells me, I can… quite imagine the, uh, friction." He considers the remainder of his drink for a long moment, as if he's daring it to taste better now that the conversation's going his way. Eventually, he braves another sip.

"Actually," I tell him, "that's exactly why I asked Uzumaki Kushina to do it."

I time the revelation perfectly, resulting in a glorious spit-take. "You what?" Given how quiet his speaking voice is, he's practically shouting at me.

It's interesting to watch all the pieces click into place. Yuuhi does, after all, have a well deserved reputation as a maths genius; he can handle this simple arithmetic well enough.

Uzumaki Kushina plus Anko plus Yusei plus Hideo multiplied by their first C-rank as a team equals…

"Oh. Oh no." It's clear he's gotten to the same conclusion I reached. "And she's, uh, going to try to test them somehow, isn't she."

"They could do to learn a little independence."

"Where?"

"Tea Country."

"What do you think the odds are that there's even going to be a Tea Country by this time tomorrow?"

"Mah, Kushina's a strong, capable kunoichi who uses fuuinjutsu in combat and solves problems very creatively. Each of the kids could learn something they need from her, yeah?"

"Eighty percent."

I laugh. "You're giving me one to four odds that two teenagers and an eight year old are going to obliterate a small country on a courier mission?" There's pessimism, and then there's _pessimism_.

Hideki meets my eyes. "And a square kilometer of country-side demolished," he tells me. "Best case scenario."

He gulps down the rest of his beer.

* * *

 **II. More like a hundred and thirty square meters - Hideo**

I substitute in the nick of time, barely avoiding my teammate's chain of explosions.

For the briefest moment, I'm confused. Before the detonation, Yusei had signaled to me _Prepare, Escape,_ and _Two_ , but that wasn't two explosions. That was a hell of a lot more than two explosions.

And then it hits me. My hands flash through the signs for a second substitution. Where to? Anywhere the fuck else. This time, I cut it so close, too close. I see phantom explosions even after I blink into existence- they're seared into my retinas.

My ears are ringing, my stomach is churning; my knees hit the ground followed soonafter by my hands. This teenage body of mine simply can't handle the strain of two consecutive substitutes, nor this proximity to so many massive detonations.

I'm wheezing, no- I'm dry heaving. I'm tangentially aware that I've collapsed in the open, but I don't have enough control over my body to do anything about it. I can only pray that Yusei's caught her with his blasts, I don't even have the energy to activate the byakugan and confirm it for myself.

Damn everything, I really am the worst ninja.

Literally all of my self worth right now is tied up in the fact that I kept the enemy off Yusei long enough for him to set that trap. Oh, and at least I didn't get blown up by my own teammate after all that effort. That'd have been pathetic.

That is to say, even more pathetic. Because I think I'm lying face down in the middle of a road right now with at least one (possibly two) hostiles still nearby, and it's hard to imagine a worse situation than this.

Yuuhi-sensei would be disappointed.

But maybe Nara-sensei would be proud. He's always going on about strategy and teamwork, and we did all that. Maybe bonus points since I faithfully executed Yusei's plan? And it's not like every training session doesn't end up with me flat on my ass anyways, so this isn't _that_ unfamiliar.

But Yuuhi-sensei would probably be disappointed, and that's really a bummer.

I try to focus. My eyes are no use, but what about those ears? That's not a Hyuuga way to think, but beggars can't be choosers.

Footsteps? Or is that my heart beating. No, no, they're too irregular. I can let myself imagine stepping carefully over whatever's left of this forest. Cloth, scraping against jagged, splintered wood. The rustling of scorched leaves as someone pushes through them. Growing louder: definitely approaching me.

Footsteps that are much too heavy to be Yusei's.

Somewhere in the distance, Anko shouts something. It's unintelligible, at least to my ringing ears, but I don't think it's a shout of pain. There's the sound of crashing water- ninjutsu? From the chuunin she was fighting? I can't remember if Anko knows any water techniques.

But this isn't the time for that- I need to focus on the clear and present danger. Anko can take care of herself.

I need to deal with these footsteps. Irregularity implies injury, or at least caution. That's probably good news. Yusei's explosions must have damaged her. Best case scenario, he's crippled her mobility. Worst case, he's only spooked her and now she's taking extra care.

I hold my breath and go limp. I haven't moved significantly since I landed here, maybe I can pass for dead.

Thump.

Thump thump.

A hiss of pain- not mine, a good sign- then another two steps.

She must be close.

My heart's hammering- how can the missing-nin not hear it? She knows. She has to know. Another footstep, she's right on top of me, no more than a meter away. All she has to do is look and I'm made.

Anko's shouting again. It's closer this time, I can make out words. Curses and epithets, not much more. She must be losing her fight.

I don't envy her much, fighting a water user right next to a river. But as counterintuitive as it sounds, that's exactly what she has to do. Has? Had. It's exactly what she _had_ to do. If she didn't keep the ninjutsu specialist near the river, it'd all have ended before it even began.

Divide and conquer, right? We've drilled this before. The three of us wouldn't have had a chance against the taijutsu specialist with full ninjutsu support, but… we split them up. It should have worked. My jyuken with Yusei's ranged support should have been enough to overwhelm our chuunin-level opponent with relative ease while Anko defended herself against the second enemy until we could back her up.

It should have worked. Instead, Yusei blew up the whole damned forest and still accomplished nothing.

What was it that Nara-sensei had said? Some people… are beyond strategy. Some people are just out of reach.

My lungs strain. Is it time to give up? If I breath, she'll know I'm alive for sure. If I don't, I'll probably black out.

A male voice calls out, resolutely declaring a water technique's name. Shit, doesn't the Water Dragon Bullet have something like forty-four hand seals? For all that she stands head and shoulders above me in terms of combat skill, Anko is definitely out of her depth in this fight.

Yusei had said that both our opponents were chuunin, and he was wrong both times. That's unlike him.1

And then it hits me: my teammate's only been reciting what he read from outdated bingo book entries. These missing-nin that we're fighting have clearly grown since they left their village, but nobody bothers amending these listings.

Water audibly pulls itself out of the river at the behest of our enemy, and I can only imagine the savage glowing eyes of the dragon forming. As the rushing water drowns out all other sounds, I realize I can no longer hear my own opponent's footsteps.

There's nothing for it then.

A deep breath and a subvocalized _Byakugan_.

And then, all at once, I can see everything. The scene rushes in and it's all my mind can do to keep up with the sudden wealth of visual stimulus. I struggle to parse the instant into distinct and digestible nuggets of information.

Anko, on one knee, her teeth grit and her arms crossed to protect her vitals, braces for impact. She's battered but not beaten- her opponent's thrown her around, but hasn't fought too seriously yet. It's likely that the explosions changed his mind, though, and convinced him to finish the fight quickly.

The chuuni- no- the jounin-level water specialist stands on the river, hands clasped in the final seal of his technique. Beside him, the water flows unnaturally upward at great velocity, forming into the deadly water dragon bullet.

But the dragon has no head. Between the two battling shinobi stands Uzumaki Kushina, right arm outstretched, elbow deep in the living liquid. Undecipherable sigils of light dance at her fingertips, pipelining chakra from every tenketsu on her arm into a glowing barrier of wind, lightning, and fire that bisects the offending technique on a molecular level. Everywhere that dragon makes contact with her barrier, it ceases to be. Water splashes formlessly to the ground on either side of the kunoichi, no longer compelled to behave against its nature.

It wouldn't do to dwell on that fight, though. Somewhere nearby, there should be a girl that wants me dead. I shake off my awe and look for her chakra.

It's surprisingly close, practically on top of me.

It's also surprisingly faint.

As soon as I inhaled, the girl ceased defending against Yusei's potential attack and rushed into finish me off. Judging from the arrow poking its blood-covered head out from between her fourth and fifth ribs, it's clear she made the wrong decision.

I breath out harshly and the world snaps suddenly back into motion.

The girl topples forward, coming to rest face down beside me. Anko's face transitions from fear and determination to dumbstruck relief. Yusei breaks cover, running out from amongst the fallen trees towards my prone form. Kushina gestures forward with her left hand, bringing out glowing chains that pierce the remnants of the disintegrating water dragon bullet and bind the missing-nin that summoned it.

 _It's done, it's over_ , I think and then the adrenaline leaves me. It takes my consciousness with it.

* * *

 **III. The last thing anybody wants - Shikaku**

It's well into the afternoon when I make my way back to work. I sneak in the side door, avoiding the areas where my presence might be remarked on. This way, my underlings might not realize I've been out all this time. It's horrifically irresponsible to let my personal issues interfere with the operations of Tactical Division.

It's just that some problems require a little time to think about. Time where you can just focus to the point of exclusion, time when nobody can disturb you.

Yusei would probably understand.

"Nara-taicho! Where have you been?" Yoshino, who pops out of her office (adjacent to my own) to harangue me, probably won't. She likes schedules and being organized a little too much to just go with the mental flow of the world. "You missed two meetings. I took the liberty of saying you were unavoidably detained, and rescheduling them for tomorrow morning."

But maybe I'm being too harsh. For all that Yoshino is a demanding assistant who gets in the way of my drinking and slacking off, she's also a nice girl with a surprising amount of faith in me. And apparently, she covers for me without needing to be asked. Is that new?

"Thanks," I tell her, "I needed some time to focus- to reevaluate some things." I step past her into my office and slump into the small couch in the corner. Yoshino follows, shutting the door behind her, and seating herself opposite me.

"Alright," she says. "What's going on with you?"

"I…" I don't know what to tell her. The last thing I want to do is shatter that misguided belief she has that I might have been off doing real and important work, but I also don't want to lie right to her face.

"Look, boss, I know it's not my place, but… you know you can talk to me." Yoshino reaches forward, and for an instant I'm worried she's about to slap me. Instead, she places her hand supportively on my shoulder. "You can talk to me about anything. Personal, I mean. And- well, stop me if I overstep. Please."

She inhales deeply and lets it out with a sigh. "Well," she goes on. "I know you've been having some issues with your family. Well, everybody knows, I guess. Since your father…"

"It's not that." I cut her off. The actual last thing I want is to talk about the complicated mess that is my disinheritance. "I've more-or-less made my peace with the Nara clan. This is..." I trail off again, at a loss.

"Okay." She moves her hand back. "I wasn't trying to say that it _was_ that. It's just that… I know that there aren't a lot of people you can let your guard down around. And, well, if you don't mind me saying this, sir, but some of your friends aren't as supportive as they should be. Or maybe they aren't as observant as they ought to-."

"My friends are fine. They're just… busy." And they are. Ino's got his hands full with the upcoming war and Cho's mind is on his wedding. And that's where their focus should be. "And I'm busy. We're all busy! It's nobody's job to, I don't fucking know, _observe_ me? Except, apparently, for you."

Yoshino flinches back, and I realize that I've raised my voice significantly. Fuck. It's a good thing she closed the door (as a necessary precaution for the protection of high-rank secrets, it completely blocks sound from leaving the room).

We're both quiet for a long moment. I breathe deeply, letting go of the temper I didn't know I had, and then apologize. "I'm sorry." She says it at the same time I do, but she doesn't have anything to be sorry for here.

I put my hand up, forestalling the rest of her apology. "No, it's me. It's my fault. You're right." The words just start tumbling out of my mouth. "I'm really awful, Yoshino. That's what I've been thinking about today; that's why I skipped out on work. I'm just such an asshole and I don't _mean_ to. It happen, it just happens. I didn't even realize I was shouting at you. I shouldn't have. It just happens and I catch it too late."

"No," she says. "It's fine. You don't need to be sorry. I meant for you to get angry. I brought up your friends and family because I knew you'd be defensive. I… just wanted you to talk to me. Even if I had to be the villain, right, it'd have been alright if it meant that you'd get this off your chest. If it meant that you could turn your full focus and intellect to the real problems. To the war that's to come. But I misjudged.

"I acted," continues Yoshino, picking her words delicately, "with the idea that you were angry and isolated, and that you didn't know it. I was hoping to help you figure that out. That was naive of me; of course you knew."

Despite the gravity of the situation, I can't help but chuckle. "You were completely spot on. You're maybe even ahead of me. I only figured it out an hour ago, but it's so much worse than you think.

"The real problem," I explain, "is I'm fundamentally an asshole." That explained nothing.

Let's try again. "This job is twisting me. This job _has been_ twisting me for years now. My base personality type aligns too well with the demands of Tactical, and I'm losing my grasp on how to be a normal person. I spend every waking second working out how I should act and what I should say in order to get exactly what I want.

"I've made every conversation a battle to be won. I play through life like it's a game of shogi. I read people instead of listening to them, then I make them dance to my tune. Nobody around me says anything that I didn't mean for them to say, but I didn't realize this until today. At least consciously.

"I suppose some part of me had to know. The part of me that can't stop drinking. Because alcohol makes my mind less… sharp? Active? Just less, and I behave like a regular man. Lately, though, that's stopped working. Instead of becoming a functional human, I lose my restraint. I become aggressive, cruel. I pick people apart just to watch them break; I'm a child pulling the wings off insects."

Yoshino breaks into my rant. "You're being too hard on yourself. I'm not going to deny that you're often a rude drunk, but listen to yourself, Shikaku. You're making yourself out to be some kind of monster."

"That's exactly what I am. Case in point: have you ever met Yuuhi Hideki?"

"Sure. He's a sweet man. Smart, but not clever."

"I had lunch with him. And I almost ruined him. I had one drink and… instead of seeing a man, I saw a list of vulnerabilities. I saw how he'd react if I poked and prodded, and I got curious about what would happen if I… motivated him. I held his life in my hands, just for a moment. I could have made him do anything. I could have made him force his apprentice to learn genjutsu, or I could have made him give up the apprentice altogether. I could have made him doubt everything he knows, and he wouldn't have left that basement of his for years out of sheer terror."

There's a spark of something in Yoshino's eyes. Understanding? Sympathy? Fear?

"And the worst thing," I go on, "is that when I caught myself toying with him, I didn't know why I was doing it. It took me hours to figure out that I was acting on cruelty and curiosity. And it's taken years for me to realize that I do this at all. How many people have I left lying in my wake? I've used this evil skill of mine on everyone. Enemies, yes, but also innocent bystanders. Even my best friends, Yoshino. Honestly, I've even affected you and I don't know how or when."

And then… it clicks. How compromised I am, and what I have to do.

"Which is why I have to quit. I can't distinguish between strategy games and real life. I can't be trusted to act rationally. I can't say with any sort of certainty if I'm advising the Hokage to go to war because it's necessary or because it's a new game to me, and I want to see if I can win a war. So I have to step down. You'll do well as the division chief, and I can keep doing analysis. Now that you know my-"

"No." The single word breaks my flow. It hangs between us, unaccompanied; it's come from Yoshino's lips, but she doesn't seem to know it. She's certainly not following it up.

We sit there for minutes, me on the couch and Yoshino in the chair. Neither of us says a word. The gears turn behind her eyes, to what end, I can't identify. I look away and watch my clock silently count the seconds.

This is the most vulnerable that I've been in years.

The last time I that I was in a conversation I couldn't predict, I ended up with a five year old for an apprentice. The time before that, my uncle took the position of Nara clan head and I ended up disinherited.

Today could go either way. The anticipation is killing me.

Finally, Yoshino speaks.

"That's the last thing that anybody wants."

I open my mouth to protest, but she doesn't give me a chance.

"Your fears are reasonable and valid, Shikaku, but not as unique or insurmountable as you think they are. I think by identifying the problem and confiding in me, you've started the first steps to overcoming this.

"It's not going to be easy, but I want to be your ally in this."

"Yoshino," I say, now that she's done. "Thank you for your confidence in me, but it's misplaced. Somewhere along the way, I sold you a picture of a strong, reasonable, and responsible Shikaku. That's not who I actually am."

And then the tense mood shatters completely as she lets out what I can only describe as something between a snort and a giggle. "We may also have to address your sheer vanity- no, narcissism- if you think you sold anyone on that. No, Shikaku, you're a drunken irresponsible layabout, and I never believed otherwise. But you're also damned clever and we need you here."

Yoshino smiles at me and suddenly, well, maybe things are going to be okay after all.

* * *

Notes:

Beta notes: 1) in which we shit on hideo some more even as we build him up as actually a smart guy 2) shikaku realizes what everyone else has always known: he's a hot mess and also an asshole 3) hideo just can't catch a break 4) i was told there would be flirting in part three and all you gave me was one giggle.

Thesecretsix notes:

Well, that took a year. I'm sorry. I've been busy moving all over the country and then writing isn't easy to resume when you put it down. Thank you everyone who continued to read and review iome during the unplanned hiatus, this chapter wouldn't have been completed without you to motivate me.

The OC Yuuhi Hideki was first mentioned in Ch 5 as Hideo's teacher and as a numbers genius. I hope he's not too hated, but he'll probably have a minimal part overall. And yes, as some people mentioned in reviews, he _is_ supposed to be Kurenai's father.

Part 1's title comes from The West Wing for no good reason.

Part 2 was the hardest to write. Fight scenes at this level are really difficult, mostly because nobody knows anything exciting yet. Also because at this level, the most Yusei can reasonably do is say "fuck collateral damage" and set massive explosions off. Team 6 couldn't win, because I needed Kushina to come in and save the day, but team 6 also couldn't lose too badly because they're a little ridiculous.

We also struggled with how I was introducing the fight. Originally, we actually started at the beginning and tried to ramp up the tension as Hideo started to realize that they were actually losing. I didn't love out that panned out, though, because all three members of team 6 are supposed to be damned smart and they came off as complete idiots.

I literally rewrote it five completely different ways before we ended up with this _en medias res_ take and a bit of postgame analysis will fill in the rest. It was originally scheduled to be in this chapter, but uh, part 3 happened. Part 3 was not intended to be half the chapter, but then it was.

And I don't know how part 3 happened. My actual notes for that were for a comedy/mildly flirting thing where shika comes in after being a dick to Hideki and says "Hey Yoshino, am I a huge asshole?" "Yeah, but it's cute." "Oh okay then." But then I wrote something completely different instead, and I stand by it. Hopefully you enjoy it.

I'm hoping to update more frequently now that my life is a little more stable. Thanks for sticking with me, folks.


End file.
